Fastest Six Shooters in the West

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Hold on there partner. This cowboy has something to say...

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88 hundredths of a second? No problem. Watch this!

video 3

...and "The Fastestest Gun Who Ever Lived" award goes to -- Bob Munden.

Tobacco and Terror

54,000 cartons of contraband cigarettes and cash seized in Queens, New York by New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and Nassau County Police.

Experts have long acknowledged that terrorist organizations such as Hizballah depend on a wide variety of criminal enterprises, ranging from smuggling to fraud to drug trade to diamond trade in regions across the world, including the United States.

Terrorist organizations rely heavily on their global web of illicit enterprises to financially support their recruiting, training, arming, and operational objectives.

As law enforcement agencies continue to combat terrorist and criminal fundraising schemes, these criminal groups will continue to adapt and exploit emerging vulnerabilities.

The ability of these groups to engage in low-risk, cash-based schemes such as cigarette smuggling are critical to the continuation of their operations.

Convicted smuggler Mohamad Hammoud counting illicit tobacco profits.

The more than $50,000 in profits that smuggling rings can generate from one contraband load (1,500 cartons) is enough to fund as many as 10 USS Cole bombing operations.

In just two months of illicit cigarette trade operations, a motivated terrorist cell could generate sufficient funds to carry out another September 11th style attack, in which operational costs were estimated to be $500,000.

Mohamad Hammoud as a youth in Lebanon and meeting with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Law enforcement agencies face a daunting task of keeping up with these ever-changing criminal schemes. Simply put, they need more help from State and Federal governments.

The last few years have seen a boom in cigarette smuggling around the world and here in the United States; and, thanks to its policy of forbearance, New York State is doing more to facilitate this trade than any other State in the union.

On June 3, 2008, New York State taxes on cigarettes are set to increase by another $12.50 per carton. This will only serve to increase the demand for illicitly smuggled cigarettes and inflate the profit margin of these smuggling networks.

A typical advertisement for duty-free cigarettes, New York Post, Saturday, April 12, 2008.

This must be brought to an end. It is more than just a matter of hundreds of millions in lost tax revenue -- it is a matter of national security.

Download the full report from the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security: Tobacco and Terror: How Cigarette Smuggling is Funding our Enemies Abroad (PDF 3.63 MB)

Survival Use of Plants 1 of 3: Edibility

Vietnam...."Home is where you dig it" was the sign over the fighting bunker of Private First Class Edward, Private First Class Falls and Private First Class Morgan of the 1st Battalion, 7th Regiment, during Operation Worth., 1968.

In a survival situation you should always be on the lookout for familiar wild foods and live off the land whenever possible.

You must not count on being able to go for days without food as some sources would suggest. Even in the most static survival situation, maintaining health through a complete and nutritious diet is essential to maintaining strength and peace of mind.

Nature can provide you with food that will let you survive any ordeal, if you don't eat the wrong plant. You must therefore learn as much as possible beforehand about the flora of the region where you will be operating.

Plants can provide you with medicines in a survival situation. Plants can supply you with weapons and raw materials to construct shelters and build fires. Plants can even provide you with chemicals for poisoning fish, preserving animal hides, and for camouflaging yourself and your equipment.

South Indian lunch served on a plantain (banana) leaf. (Clockwise from top left) edible salt, cucumber kosambari (a type of salad,) curry made of greens and green gram, potato chips, gasagase payasa (a sweet dish made of poppy seeds) [1], thovve (a side-dish made from boiled lentils) [2], raita (a salad mixed with yogurt,) bisibele bath (a mixture of rice, vegetables and boiled lentils mixed with curry powder) [3], and plain boiled rice [4]. Note: Numbers in square brackets indicate the preferred order in which they are eaten.

Edibility of Plants

Plants are valuable sources of food because they are widely available, easily procured, and, in the proper combinations, can meet all your nutritional needs.

WARNING: The critical factor in using plants for food is to avoid accidental poisoning. Eat only those plants you can positively identify and you know are safe to eat.

Absolutely identify plants before using them as food. Poison hemlock has killed people who mistook it for its relatives, wild carrots and wild parsnips.

At times you may find yourself in a situation for which you could not plan. In this instance you may not have had the chance to learn the plant life of the region in which you must survive. In this case you can use the Universal Edibility Test to determine which plants you can eat and those to avoid. It is important to be able to recognize both cultivated and wild edible plants in a survival situation. Most of the information in this article is directed towards identifying wild plants because information relating to cultivated plants is more readily available.

Remember the following when collecting wild plants for food:

• Plants growing near homes and occupied buildings or along roadsides may have been sprayed with pesticides. Wash them thoroughly. In more highly developed countries with many automobiles, avoid roadside plants, if possible, due to contamination from exhaust emissions.
• Plants growing in contaminated water or in water containing Giardia lamblia and other parasites are contaminated themselves. Boil or disinfect them.
• Some plants develop extremely dangerous fungal toxins. To lessen the chance of accidental poisoning, do not eat any fruit that is starting to spoil or showing signs of mildew or fungus.
• Plants of the same species may differ in their toxic or subtoxic compounds content because of genetic or environmental factors. One example of this is the foliage of the common chokecherry. Some chokecherry plants have high concentrations of deadly cyanide compounds while others have low concentrations or none. Horses have died from eating wilted wild cherry leaves. Avoid any weed, leaves, or seeds with an almondlike scent, a characteristic of the cyanide compounds.
• Some people are more susceptible to gastric distress (from plants) than others. If you are sensitive in this way, avoid unknown wild plants. If you are extremely sensitive to poison ivy, avoid products from this family, including any parts from sumacs, mangoes, and cashews.
• Some edible wild plants, such as acorns and water lily rhizomes, are bitter. These bitter substances usually contain tannin compounds, making them unpalatable. Boiling them in several changes of water will usually remove these bitter properties.
• Many valuable wild plants have high concentrations of oxalate compounds, also known as oxalic acid. Oxalates produce a sharp burning sensation in your mouth and throat and damage the kidneys. Baking, roasting, or drying usually destroys these oxalate crystals. The corm (bulb) of the jack-in-the-pulpit is known as the "Indian turnip," but you can eat it only after removing these crystals by slow baking or by drying.

WARNING: Do not eat mushrooms in a survival situation! The only way to tell if a mushroom is edible is by positive identification. There is no room for experimentation. Symptoms of the most dangerous mushrooms affecting the central nervous system may show up after several days have passed when it is too late to reverse their effects.

Plant Identification

You identify plants, other than by memorizing particular varieties through familiarity, by using such factors as leaf shape and margin, leaf arrangements, and root structure. The basic leaf margins (Figure 9-1) are toothed, lobed, and toothless or smooth.

These leaves may be lance-shaped, elliptical, egg-shaped, oblong, wedge-shaped, triangular, longpointed, or top-shaped (Figure 9-2).

The basic types of leaf arrangements (Figure 9-3) are opposite, alternate, compound, simple, and basal
rosette.

The basic types of root structures (Figure 9-4) are the bulb, clove, taproot, tuber, rhizome, corm, and crown.

• Bulbs are familiar to us as onions and, when sliced in half, will show concentric rings.
• Cloves are those bulblike structures that remind us of garlic and will separate into small pieces when broken apart. This characteristic separates wild onions from wild garlic.
• Taproots resemble carrots and may be single-rooted or branched, but usually only one plant stalk arises from each root.
• Tubers are like potatoes and daylilies and you will find these structures either on strings or in clusters underneath the parent plants.
• Rhizomes are large creeping rootstock or underground stems and many plants arise from the "eyes" of these roots.
• Corms are similar to bulbs but are solid when cut rather than possessing rings.
• A crown is the type of root structure found on plants such as asparagus and looks much like a mophead under the soil's surface.

Learn as much as possible about plants you intend to use for food and their unique characteristics.

Some plants have both edible and poisonous parts. Many are edible only at certain times of the year. Others may have poisonous relatives that look very similar to the ones you can eat or use for medicine.

Universal Edibility Test

There are many plants throughout the world. Tasting or swallowing even a small portion of some can cause severe discomfort, extreme internal disorders, and even death. Therefore, if you have the slightest doubt about a plant's edibility, apply the Universal Edibility Test (Figure 9-5) before eating any portion of it.

Before testing a plant for edibility, make sure there are enough plants to make the testing worth your time and effort. Each part of a plant (roots, leaves, flowers, and so on) requires more than 24 hours to test. Do not waste time testing a plant that is not relatively abundant in the area.

Remember, eating large portions of plant food on an empty stomach may cause diarrhea, nausea, or cramps. Two good examples of this are such familiar foods as green apples and wild onions. Even after testing plant food and finding it safe, eat it in moderation.

You can see from the steps and time involved in testing for edibility just how important it is to be able to identify edible plants.

To avoid potentially poisonous plants, stay away from any wild or unknown plants that have:

• Milky or discolored sap.
• Beans, bulbs, or seeds inside pods.
• Bitter or soapy taste.
• Spines, fine hairs, or thorns.
• Dill, carrot, parsnip, or parsleylike foliage.
• "Almond" scent in woody parts and leaves.
• Grain heads with pink, purplish, or black spurs.
• Three-leaved growth pattern.

Using the above criteria as eliminators when choosing plants for the Universal Edibility Test will cause you to avoid some edible plants. More important, these criteria will often help you avoid plants that are potentially toxic to eat or touch.

An entire encyclopedia of edible wild plants could be written, but space limits the number of plants presented here. Learn as much as possible about the plant life of the areas where you train regularly and where you expect to be traveling or working.

Some of the most common edible plants (identified in the coming part 2) are:

Temperate Zone Food Plants

• Amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus and other species)
• Arrowroot (Sagittaria species)
• Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis)
• Beechnut (Fagus species)
• Blackberries (Rubus species)
• Blueberries (Vaccinium species)
• Burdock (Arctium lappa)
• Cattail (Typha species)
• Chestnut (Castanea species)
• Chicory (Cichorium intybus)
• Chufa (Cyperus esculentus)
• Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
• Daylily (Hemerocallis fulva)
• Nettle (Urtica species)
• Oaks (Quercus species)
• Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)
• Plantain (Plantago species)
• Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana)
• Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia species)
• Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)
• Sassafras (Sassafras albidum)
• Sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella)
• Strawberries (Fragaria species)
• Thistle (Cirsium species)
• Water lily and lotus (Nuphar, Nelumbo, and other species)
• Wild onion and garlic (Allium species)
• Wild rose (Rosa species)
• Wood sorrel (Oxalis species)

Tropical Zone Food Plants

• Bamboo (Bambusa and other species)
• Bananas (Musa species)
• Breadfruit (Artocarpus incisa)
• Cashew nut (Anacardium occidental)
• Coconut (Cocos nucifera)
• Mango (Mangifera indica)
• Palms (various species)
• Papaya (Carica species)
• Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum)
• Taro (Colocasia species)

Desert Zone Food Plants

• Acacia (Acacia farnesiana)
• Agave (Agave species)
• Cactus (various species)
• Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera)
• Desert amaranth (Amaranths palmeri)

Seaweeds

One plant you should never overlook is seaweed. It is a form of marine algae found on or near ocean shores. There are also some edible freshwater varieties. Seaweed is a valuable source of iodine, other minerals, and vitamin C. Large quantities of seaweed in an unaccustomed stomach can produce a severe laxative effect.

When gathering seaweeds for food, find living plants attached to rocks or floating free. Seaweed washed onshore any length of time may be spoiled or decayed. You can dry freshly harvested seaweeds for later use.

Its preparation for eating depends on the type of seaweed. You can dry thin and tender varieties in the sun or over a fire until crisp. Crush and add these to soups or broths. Boil thick, leathery seaweeds for a short time to soften them. Eat them as a vegetable or with other foods. You can eat some varieties raw after testing for edibility.

• Dulse (Rhodymenia palmata)
• Green seaweed (Ulva lactuca)
• Irish moss (Chondrus crispus)
• Kelp (Alaria esculenta)
• Laver (Porphyra species)
• Mojaban (Sargassum fulvellum)
• Sugar wrack (Laminaria saccharina)

Although some plants or plant parts are edible raw, you must cook others to be edible or palatable. Edible means that a plant or food will provide you with necessary nutrients, while palatable means that it actually is pleasing to eat. Many wild plants are edible but barely palatable. It is a good idea to learn to identify, prepare, and eat wild foods.

Methods used to improve the taste of plant food include soaking, boiling, cooking, or leaching. Leaching is done by crushing the food (for example, acorns), placing it in a strainer, and pouring boiling water through it or immersing it in running water.

Boil leaves, stems, and buds until tender, changing the water, if necessary, to remove any bitterness.

Boil, bake, or roast tubers and roots. Drying helps to remove caustic oxalates from some roots like those in the Arum family.

Leach acorns in water, if necessary, to remove the bitterness. Some nuts, such as chestnuts, are good raw, but taste better roasted.

You can eat many grains and seeds raw until they mature. When hard or dry, you may have to boil or grind them into meal or flour.

The sap from many trees, such as maples, birches, walnuts, and sycamores, contains sugar. You may boil these saps down to a syrup for sweetening. It takes about 35 liters of maple sap to make one liter of maple syrup!

Excerpt from the US Army Survival Manual FM 21-76

Coming Soon:

• "Survival Use of Plants 2 of 3: Edible Plant Identification"
• "Survival Use of Plants 3 of 3: Plants for Medicinal and Other Uses"

Resistance is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated!

You will become one with the Borg.

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The Borg are a fictional pseudo-race of cyborgs depicted in Star Trek. The Borg appear in many elements of the Trek franchise, playing notably as an invasion threat to the human-founded Federation. The Borg have become a symbol in popular culture for any juggernaut against whom "resistance is futile."

In the first photo, President George W. Bush greets Army PFC Nicholas Clark at the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Private Clark wears body sensors which provide information about heart rate and muscle performance, among other things. White House Photo of the Day, Friday, Nov. 09, 2007.

Islamic Jihadists and Free Speech

Excerpt from the following Jihad Watch video: The 57-nation organization of Muslim states (OIC) has developed a "battle plan" to defend Islam from political cartoonists and bigots. No, I am not making this up. They are not working against the violent supremacists who have allegedly hijacked their religion. Apparently no battle plan is needed against them. The OIC is instead concentrating on the real threat -- those who draw cartoons of Muhammad and who point out that the terrorists themselves defend Islamic terrorism by referring to Islamic texts and teachings.

Jihad Watch #54 - video link

Thank the First Amendment, I live in America -- where freedom of speech is often defined by religious cartoons.

Germans, it seems, have also embraced the inalienable right of free speech. From a German comedy show, watch this satirical take on flag burning -- "Would you like to burn that here or to go?"

Burning Flags - video link

In conclusion, I'd like to thank MasterCard for its iconic contribution to pop humor.

American flag $25. Gasoline & lighter $5. Catching yourself on fire because you are a terrorist asshole... PRICELESS!

.577 T-Rex Goes Boom to "O Fortuna"

.577 T-Rex Goes Boom to "O Fortuna" - video link

...and other big bore rifles up to... 2,581 feet per second... 11,100 foot pounds... 750 grains... and all with no muzzle break... OUCH!!!!

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O Fortuna (lyrics in Latin)

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris.

Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contraria, est affectuset defectus semper in angaria. Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite; quod per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!

O Fortuna (lyrics in English)

O Fortune, like the moon you are constantly changing, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice.

Fate - monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.

Fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!

O Fortuna is a poem from Carmina Burana, a collection of Latin poems written in early 13th century. Fortuna is the goddess of fortune in Roman Mythology. German composer Carl Orff selected 24 poems from the collection and set them to new music between 1935 and 1936. O Fortuna is the most famous movement from his Carmina Burana, and opens and closes the cycle. Orff's setting of the poem has become immensely popular and has been performed by countless ensembles. The composition appears in numerous movies and television commercials and has become a staple in popular culture.

The Politics of the Improbable

The Politics of the Improbable

By Peter Zeihan, Stratfor.com

Fear is a powerful motivator, even getting results when the threat is exceedingly remote. It makes us cross at crosswalks even when traffic is thin, pay more over time for fire insurance than our homes are worth, and shy away from snakes even when signs clearly inform us they are not poisonous. Humans instinctively take steps to prevent negative outcomes, oftentimes regardless of how likely — or more to the point, unlikely — those unpleasant outcomes are.

As with individuals, the same is true for countries. Anyone can blithely say Cuba or Serbia would not dare ignore the will of their more powerful neighbors, or that Brazil’s or Egypt’s nuclear programs are so inconsequential as not to impact the international balance of power. But such opinions — even if they truly are near-certainties — cannot form the foundation of state power. National leaders do not have the luxury of ignoring the plethora of coulds, mights and maybes that pepper their radar screens every day. An analyst can dismiss a dark possibility as dubious, but a national leader cannot gamble with the lives of his countrymen and the existence of his state. They must evaluate even improbable threats against the potential damage to their respective national interests.

Many of the standing policies we take for granted have grown from such evaluations. While the likelihood of Israel bombing the Aswan High Dam is rather remote, Egypt cannot afford to risk the possibility, which contributed to Cairo’s burying-of-the-hatchet with Israel. Worrying about continental European countries sublimating their national differences, uniting into a federated superstate and invading the United Kingdom may seem to flirt with lunacy, but within that lingering concern lies the root of the Anglo-American alliance. Similarly, worrying about China using the archipelagos of Southeast Asia as a staging point for an invasion of Australia may seem ludicrous, but that fear dominates military planning in Canberra.

Predicting national management of improbable outcomes is among the more difficult tasks presented to Stratfor’s staff. Such empathetic analysis requires not just a deep and dispassionate understanding of a country’s strengths and weaknesses, but also a deep and extremely passionate understanding about how a country’s neighbors perceive it. Our work is not simply about what is, but about what leaders fear might come to be. And that requires not merely understanding reality, but developing an accurate evaluation of the sorts of risks national leaders are willing to take with their actions — and their inactions.

This management of improbable outcomes also dominates the question of the day: Iraq.

Currently, the Iranians and Americans are locked into increasingly public negotiations over Iraq’s future. Buried at the heart of those talks are two nightmare scenarios. Iran wants to ensure that a Sunni-controlled Iraq is never resuscitated, while the United States desires a framework to guarantee that Iran cannot invade the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula.

Neither of those nightmares is particularly likely to occur.

The Sunnis of Iraq not only are the smallest of Iraq’s three major ethno-sectarian groups, but as a community, they are just as fractured as the country’s notoriously squabbling Shia. The Sunnis thus sport splits between secular Baathist nationalists and Islamist militants, among other fractures. Yes, the Sunnis under Saddam Hussein rose to command all of Iraq, but even with strong American support the recreation of such a constellation could come neither quickly nor easily. And even were that to occur, it is not as if Iraq’s Sunnis are itching for a genocidal war with a neighboring country sporting a population more than ten times the size of Iraq’s Sunni community.

On the flip side, the Iranian military is hardly capable of marching into the Saudi oil fields. The mountainous nature of Iran means the country is packed with minority groups — in fact nearly half of all Iranians are not ethnically Persian — that could rise up and threaten the regime in Tehran. Managing this country requires an infantry-heavy military better suited toward domestic control than to a 350-mile slog through swamps and very flat, very hot, dry deserts where the Iraqi army discovered it was very easy to see one’s entire force become very destroyed.

Yet what may seem remote to one side cannot be ruled out as impossible by the other, and in that sliver of possibility lies a foe’s worst fear — and American and Iranian leaders alike do not dare ignore the risks of those nightmares arising. The last Persian-Mesopotamian war (known in modern vernacular as the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war) claimed a million casualties. Would you like to be the Iranian leader who allowed a Sunni-ruled Iraq to re-emerge? Nearly 25 million barrels per day of crude oil — nearly one-third of global output — is produced in the Persian Gulf. Would you like to be the American president who failed to prevent all that power from becoming concentrated under a single (hostile) state?

The topic of the American-Iranian negotiations is not to get past these fears — no amount of Carter-esque goodwill is going to convince Washington and Tehran to trust the other — but instead to embed these fears in the final settlement and craft a solution that is institutionally neutral. For this a template does indeed exist. In fact, the United States has done precisely this, in partnership with a country for which it held far more vitriol and anger that it does for Iran.

At the end of World War II, the Soviets wanted to ensure that Finland could never again bloody the Russian nose (casualty ratios in the Russo-Finnish War, or Winter War, of 1941 were the worst Soviet Russia ever suffered). Yet the bulk of Finland was not in Soviet hands at war’s end, and the Western powers certainly did not want to see the balance of power in the Baltic states altered. The settlement was that Finland would have a Western-style participatory democracy, but the Soviet Union would enjoy a de facto veto over all decision-making. The result was a “free” Finland with a capitalist economy and a robust defense force, but a country that did not join either NATO or the European Economic Community and remained strictly neutral in international affairs.

Replicating the Finnish example in Iraq would create a united Iraq with American security guarantees that could prevent any Iranian incursion into Arabia, but with sufficient Iranian aspects to prevent the formation of a powerful offensive military. The fears of both sides would be managed by being built into the foundation of a new Iraqi state. Should Washington seek to double-cross Tehran and begin a serious Iraqi rearmament campaign, Iran could use its influence over the Shia to tear Iraq down and revive the threat to Arabia. And should Iran play the Shiite card, the United States could side militarily with the Sunnis. No one would really “win,” but neither would anyone really lose.

International BOYCOTT DIGG Day -- 8/8/08

A boycott is the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with someone or some other organization as an expression of protest.

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I don't have to tell you to bury a post is bad -- everybody knows to bury is bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth... banks are going bust... shop-keepers keep a gun under the counter... punks are running wild on the street and there's nobody anywhere that seems to know what to do. And there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat... we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes -- as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We know things are bad; worse than bad. They're crazy! It's like everything, everywhere is going crazy. So, we don't go out anymore; we sit in the house and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms... let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't bury anything -- just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone... I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad... you've got to say, "I'm a human being -- Goddamn it -- MY POST HAS VALUE!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up, right now, and go to the window -- open it and stick your head out and yell, "I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" I want you to get up -- RIGHT NOW -- get up, go to your windows, open them, and stick your head out and yell, "I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" Things have got to change! You've got to get mad... you've got to say, "I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" Then, we'll figure out what to do...

Network - Mad as Hell - video link

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In protest of Digg's policy that allow's other users to easily bury your posts, I urge you to BOYCOTT DIGG!

I declare, August 8, 2008, (the date of the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony), as International BOYCOTT DIGG Day.

Come on, everyone. Show Digg what you REALLY think of their bury policy (CENSORSHIP!)

Let's get 'em where it really hurts -- the old click revenue pocketbook!

Join me in telling Digg, "I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Fight censorship. BOYCOTT DIGG on AUGUST 8, 2008.

Regards, Covertress

P.S. It was my intention to boycott Digg indefinitely, but more than a few good friends I met there have given me the hope that it is still possible to spread the word, even if it gets buried. Thanks guys and gals. You know who you are. ;)

P.P.S. Until Digg modifies it's over-weighted bury policy, the 8/8/08 boycott is still a go.

The Terrorist Threat to the Food Supply

Placing the Terrorist Threat to the Food Supply in Perspective

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, Stratfor.com

High food prices have sparked a great deal of unrest over the past few weeks. Indeed, the skyrocketing cost of food staples like grain has caused protests involving thousands of people in places such as South Africa, Egypt and Pakistan. These protests turned deadly in Haiti and even led to the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis.

With global food supplies already tight, many people have begun once again to think (and perhaps even worry) about threats to the U.S. agricultural system and the impact such threats could have on the U.S. — and global — food supply. In light of this, it is instructive to examine some of these threats and attempt to place them in perspective.

A Breakdown of Potential Threats

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there have been many reports issued by various government and civilian sources warning of the possibility that terrorists could target the U.S. food supply. At the most basic level, threats to a country’s food supply can come in two general forms: attacks designed to create famine and attacks designed to directly poison people.

Attacks designed to create famine would entail the use of some agent intended to kill crops or livestock. Such agents could include pathogens, insects or chemicals. The pathogens might include such livestock diseases as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly called mad cow disease, or hoof-and-mouth disease. Crop diseases such as Ug99 fungus or molds also pose a threat to supplies.

Attacks designed to poison people could also be further divided into two general forms: those intended to introduce toxins or pathogens prior to processing and those intended to attack finished food products. Attacks against foodstuffs during agricultural production could include placing an agent on crops in the field or while in transit to a mill or processing center. Attacks against finished foodstuffs would entail covertly placing the toxin or pathogen into the finished food product after processing.

It must be noted that an attack against people could also be conducted for the purposes of creating a mass disruption — such action would not be designed to cause mass casualties, but rather to create fear, unrest and mistrust of the government and food supply, or to promote hoarding. In fact, based on historical examples of incidents involving the contamination of food products, such an attack is far more likely to occur than a serious systematic attack on the food supply.

Attack Constraints

While attacks against the food supply may appear simple in theory, they have occurred infrequently and for good reason: When one considers the sheer size of the U.S. agricultural sector, conducting a productive assault proves difficult.

As seen by the coca and marijuana eradication efforts by the United States and its partners in Mexico, Central America and the Andes, the logistical effort needed to make any substantial dent in agricultural production is massive. Even the vast resources the United States has dedicated to drug eradication tasks in small countries –- overt plane flights spraying untold thousands of gallons of herbicides for decades — have failed to create more than a limited effect on marijuana and coca crops. Obviously, any sort of meaningful chemical attack on U.S. agriculture would have to be so massive that it is simply not logistically feasible.

This is where pathogens — agents that can, at least in theory, be introduced in limited amounts, reproduce and then rapidly spread to infect a far larger area — enter the picture. In order to be effective, however, a pathogen must be one that is easily spread and very deadly and has a long incubation period (in order to ensure it is passed along before the host dies). It is also very helpful to the propagation of a disease if it is difficult to detect and/or difficult to treat. While a pathogen that possesses all of the aforementioned traits could be devastating, finding such an agent is difficult. Few diseases have all the requisite characteristics. Some are very deadly, but act too quickly to be passed, while others are more readily passed but do not have a long incubation period or are not as virulent. Other pathogens, such as the Ug99 wheat fungus, are easy to detect and kill. There is also the problem of mutation, meaning that many pathogens tend to mutate into less virulent actors. It is also important to note that genetically engineering a super bug — one that possess all the characteristics to make it highly effective — is still much harder in real life than it is on television.

Even if such an effective pathogen is found, someone intending to use it in an attack must isolate the virulent strain, manufacture it in sufficient quantities to be effective, ship it to the place of the planned attack and then distribute it in a manner whereby it is effectively dispersed. The infrastructure required to undertake such an endeavor is both large and expensive. Even in past cases where groups possessed the vast monetary resources to fund biological weapons efforts and amassed the scientific expertise to attempt such a program — Aum Shinrikyo comes to mind — virulent pathogens have proven very difficult to produce and effectively disperse in large quantities.

Another factor making these sorts of attacks difficult to orchestrate is the very nature of farming. For thousands of years, farmers have been battling plant and animal diseases. Most of the pathogens that are mentioned in connection with attacks against agriculture include elements already existing in nature such as hoof-and-mouth disease, H5N1 bird flu or a fungus like Ug99. As a result, farmers and governmental organizations such as the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have systems in place to monitor crops and animals for signs of pathogens. When these pathogens appear, action is taken and diseased crops are treated or eradicated. Animals are treated or culled. Even in past cases where massive eradication and culling efforts occurred — BSE in the United Kingdom, citrus canker in Florida or the many bird flu outbreaks over the past few years –- the measures have not crippled or affected the country’s agricultural sector or the larger economy.

Creating famine and poisoning the food supply are also difficult, given the sheer quantity of agricultural products grown. Applying some sort of toxin before the raw food is processed is difficult, given the volume produced. In fact, much grain is diverted to uses other than human consumption, as when corn is used to produce ethanol or feed livestock. Therefore, if a truckload of corn is poisoned, it might never funnel into the human food chain. Furthermore, even if a truck of contaminated grain were destined for the food chain, by the time it made its way through the process it would likely be too diluted to have any effect. During the production process, contaminated corn would first have to combine with other grain, sit in a silo, be moved and stored again, ground and finally made into a finished food product such as a loaf of cornbread — an unlikely source of poisoning for the end user. Processing, washing, cooking, pasteurizing and refining may all also serve to further dilute, cleanse or damage the pathogen in the targeted product. At this point, food is also inspected for naturally occurring pathogens and toxins. Such inspections could help spot an intentional contamination.

Besides, even contaminating one truckload of grain would require a large amount of toxin. Producing that much toxin would require a substantial infrastructure –- one that would require a great deal of time and money to build. Not to mention the difficulty inherent in transporting and delivering the toxin.

Past Attacks Prove Few and Far Between

Actual attacks against food are very rare. And due to the considerations enumerated above, nearly every food attack we are aware of was an attempt to directly poison people and not cause famine. Furthermore, almost all of these attacks involved processed foods or raw foods packaged for human consumption.

While people are frequently sickened by pathogens in food such as E. coli or salmonella bacteria, most incidents are not intentional. One of the few known successful attempts at using a biological agent to contaminate food in the United States occurred in 1984 in the small Oregon town of The Dalles. Followers of cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, attempting to manipulate a local election, infected salad bars in 10 restaurants with Salmonella typhimurium, causing about 751 people to become ill.

A second contamination attempt occurred in October 1996, when 12 laboratory workers at a large medical center in Texas experienced severe gastrointestinal illness after eating muffins and doughnuts left in their break room. Laboratory tests revealed that the pastries had been intentionally infected with S. dysenteriae, a pathogen that rarely occurs in the United States. An investigation later determined that the pathogen came from a stock culture kept at the lab.

While many people recall the 1989 Chilean grape scare — when two grapes imported to the United States were injected with cyanide — few recall that the perpetrator in the case made several calls to the U.S. Embassy warning of the contamination and was therefore not seriously attempting to harm people, but rather attempting an action designed to draw attention to social injustice in Chile. The warning calls allowed agricultural inspectors to find the damaged and discolored grapes before they were eaten.

In a lesser-known case that took place in 1978, a dozen children in the Netherlands and West Germany were hospitalized after eating oranges imported from Israel. The Arab Revolutionary Council, a nom de guerre used by the Abu Nidal Organization, deliberately contaminated the fruit with mercury in an attempt to damage the Israeli economy.

Potential Players and the Public Impact

Such attacks could potentially be conducted by a wide array of actors, ranging from a single mentally disturbed individual on one end of the spectrum to sovereign nations on the other end. Cults and domestic or transnational terrorist groups fall somewhere in the middle. The motivation behind these diverse actors could range from monetary extortion or attempts to commit mass murder to acts of war designed to cripple the U.S. economy or the nation’s ability to project power.

Of these actors, however, there are very few who possess the ability to conduct attacks that could have a substantial impact on the U.S. food supply. In fact, most of the actors are only capable of contaminating finished food products. While they all have this rudimentary capability, there is also the question of intent.

Documents and manuals found in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion revealed an al Qaeda interest in conducting chemical and biological attacks, although this interest was not a well-developed program. From a cost-benefit standpoint, it would be much cheaper and easier to use explosives to create disruption than it would be to execute a complicated plot against the food supply. Besides, such a target would not produce the type of spectacular imagery the group enjoys.

While we do not foresee any huge attempt by the Russians or Chinese, and food supply is not a part of al Qaeda’s preferred target set, it is possible that a lone wolf or a smaller extremist organization could attempt to conduct such an attack. While any such offensive will likely have limited success, it could have far wider societal repercussions. At the present time, the public has become somewhat accustomed to food scares and recalls over things such as contaminated spinach, ground beef and green onions. Even warnings over lead and other harmful chemicals in food imported from China have caused concern. However, if even a relatively unsuccessful attack on the food supply were conducted by a terrorist group, it could create significant hysteria — especially if the media sensationalized the event. In such a case, even an ineffective terror plot could result in a tremendous amount of panic and economic loss.

Perhaps the best recent example of this type of disruptive attack is the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. Although the attacks only claimed the lives of five victims, they caused a huge, disproportionate effect on the collective American and world psyche. The public fears that arose from the anthrax attacks were augmented by extensive media discussions about the use of the agent as a weapon. The public sense of unease was further heightened by the fact that the perpetrator was never identified or apprehended. As a result, countless instances surfaced in which irrational panic caused office buildings, apartment buildings, government offices and factories to be evacuated. Previously ignored piles of drywall dust and the powdered sugar residue left by someone who ate a donut at his desk led to suspicions about terrorists, who suddenly seemed to be lurking around every corner. It did not matter, in the midst of the fear, that the place where the “anthrax” was found could have absolutely no symbolic or strategic value to the Islamist militants that most Americans pictured in their minds. The sense of threat and personal vulnerability was pervasive.

In the years since 2001, thousands of hoax anthrax letters have been sent to companies, government offices, schools and politicians in the United States and abroad. Many of these hoaxes have caused psychosomatic responses, resulting in victims being hospitalized, and further economic losses in terms of lost production time, emergency hazmat response costs and laboratory tests.

In the end, the most probable attack against the food supply is unlikely to create a significant death toll, but the panic such an attack may evoke can cause repercussions that are far greater than the death toll itself.

Syria's Nuclear Program

Damascus at night.

What are Syria's Nuclear Capabilities?

By Clayton Keir, December 10, 2007

Introduction

The September 6, 2007 Israeli strike inside Syria led to widespread speculation on the nature of the target. Commentators on international affairs and experts on nuclear issues have debated the possibility that the targeted site was a nuclear reactor provided by North Korea. The conclusion of the debate is critical, because Syrian nuclear proliferation would significantly undermine the security of a U.S. ally, Israel. I will critically analyze the different sides of the debate, debunk many arguments, and provide my own assessment. Despite concern from the U.S. Intelligence Community and some policy-makers that Syria was working on a nuclear fuel cycle, it is widely believed that Damascus could not develop an indigenous fuel cycle. I will also assess the claim that Syria could not develop an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle.

In this paper I first examine Syria's indigenous nuclear capabilities. I argue that Syria is incapable of indigenously mastering the nuclear fuel cycle. Then, I analyze the suspected reactor site, and critically assess claims that it was a nuclear reactor construction site, and that it is of North Korean origin. Finally, the paper offers policy recommendations in light of my assessments.

Statue of Saladdin, a 12th-century Kurd who became Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and a major Muslim political and military leader.

Section I. Syria's Indigenous Nuclear Capabilities

Any attempt by Syria to develop an indigenous nuclear program faces numerous and significant difficulties. Although there is evidence of research, there is no proof of mastery of any elements of the fuel cycle. Current capabilities, outside of the alleged North Korean reactor, are not concerning. Most indigenous efforts are either not directed towards mastering the nuclear fuel cycle, or have failed to succeed. The preponderance of evidence indicates that Syria will depend on outside assistance for almost the entire fuel cycle.

Syria has relied on substantial outside contributions throughout its nuclear history. Significant indigenous efforts are few, and often unsuccessful. Syria’s nuclear history begins in 1969 with the signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Ten years later, Syria established its Atomic Energy Commission of Syria (AECS). The AECS is a “governmental agency responsible for peaceful utilizations of atomic and nuclear technologies[1].” As far as we know, until 2007, all nuclear developments have come through the AECS. Dr. Ibrahim Othman heads the AECS and leads the organization in conducting nuclear research projects. Many of the AECS's nuclear projects involve work with assistance from other countries and the IAEA.

Syria’s quest for a nuclear reactor began in the 1980’s. Throughout the decade, Syria indicated its interest in obtaining a nuclear reactor, and sought out many opportunities. However, U.S. resistance over Syrian behavior made acquisition prohibitively difficult. It was not until 1991 that construction on Syria's nuclear reactor began. It is widely believed that Syria received U.S. permission for the reactor because of its good behavior and cooperation during the Gulf War[2]. Syria used the opportunity to acquire a 30 KW research reactor from China. However, the type of reactor is the cheapest in the world[3], and was not a major concession by the U.S. After beginning construction in 1991, the reactor achieved criticality in 1997[4], meaning it had begun and self-sustained a fission reaction.

Syria's 30 KW miniature neutron source reactor is located near Damascus at the Der Al-Hadjar Nuclear Research Center. The plant can produce neutrons for nuclear analysis, isotopes for industrial applications, and radioisotopes for training purposes, but it cannot be used for weapons production. The reactor consists of only 1 kg of highly-enriched uranium (HEU), which is well short of the 25 kg of HEU necessary for a nuclear weapon. However, the plant cannot be ruled out as a source of nuclear research. The reactor could provide essential insights for Syrian scientists into the nuclear fuel cycle that they would not be able to acquire through their own research. However, the extent of Syrian learning from the research reactor can be monitored, as the reactor is under IAEA safeguards. We know that through 2002, three operators of the reactor had conducted 1,371 experiments[5].

Syria recognizes the limitations of its existing reactor, and has tried on multiple occasions to obtain a larger reactor. It wanted a 5 MW research reactor like Iran has in the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, and solicited Argentina and India for assistance[6]. However, U.S. pressure caused the negotiations to break down. In both 1998 and 2003, Russia agreed to construct a nuclear reactor for Syria, but both agreements fell through, ostensibly due to pressure from the U.S[7].

In 1997, Syria and the IAEA began a technical assistance project that would give Syria a cyclotron facility. The cyclotron is also primarily for research purposes. Like the research reactor, it has industrial purposes, specifically medicine. It allows Syria to produce short-lived radio-nuclides and short-lived radiopharmaceuticals for the first time. The cyclotron works by accelerating particles through electro-magnetic force. Such a technique could be used in Electromagnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS) enrichment. Although there is speculation that the Syrians are using research on the cyclotron to create an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle, the cyclotron is not the same technology as is used in EMIS. Moreover, EMIS is a very energy inefficient process. If possible, Syria would probably find it more practical to pursue the more efficient centrifuge enrichment method[8].

To develop a functioning nuclear program, Syria would need to acquire significant amounts of uranium ore. Syria has attempted to extract uranium ore from phosphate rock with two major projects: the 1986 Phosphate Extraction Facility outside of Homs, and the 2001 Tri-superphosphate Extraction Facility outside of Palmyra. Recovering uranium from phosphates is a proven method for obtaining uranium[9], but not one that Syria has mastered. The 1986 project was to recover uranium from the phosphoric acid that was produced at the plant in Homs. The Homs plant produced the phosphoric acid from phosphate rock located at Charkia and Knifes. The deposits contain approximately 60 to 100 parts per million of uranium. The project between the IAEA and the AECS was canceled for “financial and contractual reasons[10].” Specifically, despite the fact that the technology worked, the world market price of uranium was not sufficiently high enough to justify the program. The 2001 project may be technically feasible, but financial constraints have delayed production[11]. Even if Syria could extract uranium from phosphates, they would still need “a pilot plant, an industrial scale plant and then possibly operations such as refining, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication[12].”

Syria does not appear to have any of the subsequent stages of the nuclear fuel cycle either. The Strategic Studies Institute’s Wyn Bowen and Joanna Kidd assess that, “Syria does not appear to have conversion, enrichment, or fuel fabrication capabilities[13].” Prior to the possible North Korean reactor, there was no plausible evidence proving otherwise. There is some speculation that the Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan may have proliferated P-1 centrifuges or centrifuge design to Syria[14]. However, evidence that Damascus ever received any materials or designs from Khan is very dubious. A 2004 declassified CIA report to Congress expressed concerns over the possibility AQ Khan offered technology to Syria[15]. However, the report depends on Pakistani press sources claiming that the IAEA is alleging that AQ Khan offered the technology. Not only does the report rely on several layers of unsubstantiated hearsay, but it doesn't even claim that Khan transferred the technology. Subsequent reporting indicates that Syria declined the assistance[16]. There is no concrete evidence supporting the claim that AQ Khan gave Syria technology or materials related to a nuclear program.

An indigenous nuclear program is probably beyond Syria's financial means. Syria’s 2006 GDP is estimated at $78 Billion[17]. In 1993, the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment estimated the cost of a nuclear weapons program in the hundreds of millions of dollars[18]. However, an indigenous clandestine program can cost from 10 to 50 times more[19]. Syria would have to dedicate a prohibitively large portion of its GDP to fund a nuclear weapons program, and most analysts concur that they do not have the economic base to do that. Syria suffers from poor infrastructure, antiquated technology, and declining oil revenues. An aging population, a command economy, and the restrictions on political freedoms which deter foreign investment also contribute to a weak Syrian economy[20].

Even if Syria wanted to dedicate its resources to a nuclear weapons program, it would still require “at least a modest technological infrastructure[21].” Syria’s scientific base is very weak, and insufficient to develop a nuclear program. Syria has very little participation in international science publications databases, even relative to neighbors in the region. Syrian papers are not frequently published in international journals. As the Swedish Defense Research Agency reports, “A survey of the major scientific databases from the 1960s to 2003 only produced approximately 280 “hits” for Syria compared to much higher numbers for Jordan (8,000), Egypt (60,000) and Israel (100,000)[22].” Perusing the AECS website[23] yields very few reports that the commission has published. Most articles on the site are not published by the AECS. Although it is possible that Syria is keeping its research private, to conceal a clandestine program, it is more likely that Syria has a very low technical base. My assessment is further supported by the fact that one of the main inhibiting factors to Syria’s economic infrastructure is antiquated technology. Joseph Cirincione from the Center for American Progress concurs with my assessment: “This is an extremely demanding technology, and I don't think Syria has the technical, engineering or financial base to really support such a reactor[24].”

Syria's two most significant nuclear developments are its research reactor and cyclotron. Neither development is near sufficient to acquire adequate levels of fissile material, and both are products of international largess. Both are also primarily for nuclear research, and would be very difficult to impossible to convert into an enrichment program. Both are also under IAEA safeguards, making it very difficult to use in a clandestine nuclear program.

Section II. The Suspected Reactor

On September 6, 2007, Israel struck targets inside of Syria. The public reaction to Israel's strike has been strangely quiet. Both Syria and Israel have generally refrained from talking about the attack. The U.S. and the rest of the international community have also said very little about it. Although not every targeted site has been identified in the open-source world, widespread reporting, and unclassified imagery have pointed to one site, which may have contained a reactor. The IAEA is still analyzing images of the site before offering their assessment. In the meantime, nuclear experts in the open-source world offer analysis on the event. The goal of this section is to analyze the merits and deficiencies of different viewpoints on the nature of the site. I then attempt to improve the debate by offering new arguments and possibilities. For different scenarios, I give estimations of probability, assessing whether it is impossible, unlikely, possible, probable, or certain.

The first major open-source assessment of the suspected facility was David Albright and Paul Brannan's report, “Suspect Reactor Construction Site in Eastern Syria: The Site of the Sept 6 Israeli Raid?” Albright and Brannan argue that the facility is of North Korean origin. They support their claim by pointing out that the sides measure approximately the same as the North Korean 5 MW Reactor at Yongbyon.

Figure 1. Side-by-side comparison of the North Korean and Syrian Reactor. Mensurations performed by ISIS .

The high bay of the North Korean reactor measures approximately the same as the center segment of the Syrian suspected site. The water pump next to the Euphrates River (see Appendix) would be used to provide cooling water for the reactor.

The lack of visible reactor construction is consistent with their explanation, as the reactor vessel is built gradually inside the building, and not brought to the site already constructed. No large crane would be necessary to bring large pieces of heavy equipment inside. The roof would hide what was going on inside the building very early in construction. Such a construction method is based off of previous Russian designs[25].

After Israel ’s strike, the quick clean-up of the area, which was complete by October 24 at the latest, increases the likelihood that it was being used for nuclear purposes [26]. Syria and North Korea would not have wanted to expose their actions to the world , and would have had strong incentives to clean up quickly . If based off of the North Korean reactor, it has the capability to produce 20-25 MW, which would make enough plutonium for one nuclear weapon a year. If it is a gas-graphite reactor, then it would need a specialized facility to chemically separate the plutonium from the irradiated fuel discharged from the reactor. However, such a facility has not been located.

Joseph Cirincione from the Center for American Progress very strongly criticizes the ISIS view. He states, “This isn't like a Road Runner cartoon where you call up Acme Reactors and they deliver a functioning reactor to your back yard. It takes years to build [27].” He furthers, “If North Korea gave them anything short of nuclear weapons it is of little consequence. Syria does not have the financial, technical or industrial base to develop a serious nuclear program anytime in the foreseeable future [28].”

There are several problems with Cirincione's critique. First, the facility has been under construction for years. There are images of it available back to 2003 [29]. The presence of trucks and heavy machinery indicate that it was still under construction. While he is correct that Syria 's technical and financial bases would be hard pressed to support a nuclear weapons program, North Korean assistance would help Syria overcome many of the difficulties. The most logistically and technically demanding element of the nuclear fuel cycle is acquiring the fissile material. If North Korea can provide the Syrians with already highly-enriched uranium, can help them with and oversee plutonium production, and give them weapons designs, Syria does not face a very daunting task. The only real difficulty left is hiding the program from the world, which they apparently failed to do.

Martha Raddatz from ABC[30] provides an alternative view, but still supports the claim that the site was a reactor construction site. She cites a U.S. government official to support her argument. The official describes images with a big cylindrical structure, with thick reinforced walls. There was a secondary support structure and a pump station, because a nuclear reactor would need water for coolant. There was a larger structure just north of the small pump station. No fissionable material was found because the facility wasn't yet operational. The official also claims that the facility had North Korean construction design, technology, and expertise. Finally, a light water reactor designed by the North Koreans could produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert who maintains the Blog ArmsControlWonk.com provides a good criticism of Raddatz's view[31]. First, the reactor is box-shaped, not cylindrical. Second, the comparison to North Korea is problematic, as North Korean reactors are gas-cooled, which do not require a pump. In addition to Lewis's criticism, there is no large structure north of the pumping station, which further makes Raddatz's claim difficult to accept. Lewis does however, concur with Raddatz that it could be a light water reactor.

Lewis's light water reactor analysis also functions as a criticism of Albright and Brannan. According to Lewis, it is possible that the site contains a light water reactor provided by Iran, which no one is mentioning. Since the reactor could just as easily be of Iranian origin, the case that it is North Korean is suspect. Furthermore, the site could be almost anything. All we can see is a big concrete building and a water pump. There could be multiple industrial purposes for a water pump, and it could even be a swimming pool.

After reporting of the attack, Lewis subscribed to the argument that the facility was storing a North Korean shipment of SCUD-B and C missiles[32]. If it was an intended launch site, where the missiles might launch through the raised middle segment, they would most likely be SCUD-C variants. The site is approximately 600 kilometers from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and 500 kilometers from the Israeli border[33]. The maximum range for the SCUD-C is 600 km, whereas the maximum range of the SCUD-B is 300 km[34]. However, Lewis later changed his opinion after the source, Chris Nelson, also abandoned the view[35]. The SCUD scenario is unlikely for several reasons. First, there are no functionally-related observable differences of the facility in the imagery to prove that it is dedicated to SCUD missile storage. Second, there is no clear reason why a SCUD storage structure would need a pumping station. Third, the facility doesn't have any of the features of other SCUD bases. The image on the next page shows a typical Syrian SCUD storage base.

Figure 2. Image of five Syrian SCUD storage bunkers. The bunkers are horizontal, with drive-through entrances and exits. There are no functionally-related observable similarities between the storage bunkers and the building on the Euphrates. Analysis performed by Clayton Keir. Image Source: Google Earth

Fourth, there is no clear reason why Syria would pick the facility for SCUD missile storage. There is no major access road. It is approximately 350 kilometers from any port, and the missiles supposedly came by sea. Thus, the SCUD missile storage theory does not seem plausible.

There are several flaws in other elements of Lewis's analysis. After his posts, readers have pointed out that the North Korean reactors definitely do use water coolant, as you can see steam coming out of the cooling tower. Even though no pump is visible, the reactor site is very close to the river, a constant source of water. Lewis later concedes that water coolant could be used for a secondary cooling tower, a possibility he neglected. However, it is more than just a possibility. The steam coming out of the tower means that water is certainly used in the process, and would be used by the Syrian reactor.

Lewis's concurrence with Raddatz's light water reactor analysis is useful, because it allows us to compare the North Korean link to a competitive scenario. Syria has previously indicated a desire for a Pan-Arab nuclear program[36]. While Iran is not Arab, Syria could still see Iran as part of a general partnership, given their recent cooperative diplomacy. Moreover, Syria certainly would need help in a nuclear fuel cycle, and bringing in cooperation would be plausible. The claim that it is a light water reactor, rather than the North Korean MAGNOX variety also allows us to compare the site to an alternative nuclear site. However, the site is certainly not a light water reactor. Water-moderated reactors are huge, unmistakably large structures[37]. For example, the heavy water reactor at the Savannah River Site in Georgia measures approximately 180 meters wide (see Appendix). There is nothing in the image coming close to that size. If Syria wanted to have a clandestine nuclear program, a heavy water reactor would be a terrible strategic idea, because it is unmistakable. It is impossible for the site to be a light water reactor.

Although I tend to agree with Albright and Brannan's view, there are significant shortcomings. First, the fact that the analysis is so heavily dependent on roof analysis is problematic. Without the ability to see inside the buildings, analyzing the roof does not yield very useful conclusions[38]. Simply because two buildings have the same floor space does not mean that they are used for similar purposes. Second, their roof measurements are also problematic. The high bay of the North Korean reactor does not have the same measurement as the middle segment of Syrian building. The measurements of these two sections are the most important part of the comparison, because that is where the reactor would be located. The surrounding structure measurements could vary naturally, and wouldn't be as important. However, the reactor measurement is the measurement that really matters.

However, Albright and Brannan's North Korean link is still salvageable. First, it is possible that their measurements are incorrect. Extending the length of the middle segment is plausible. Looking at the Syrian suspected site, if we extend the measurement of the middle section to the edge of the building, the high bay and middle segment match.

Figure 3. Side-by-side comparison of the Yongbyon reactor (left) with the suspected Syrian reactor building (right). Analysis performed by Clayton Keir. Yongbyon Image Source: Google Earth, Syria Image Source: DigitalGlobe

Although on first look the center appears to be divided, the roofing 'division' on the southern side does not look as straight as the division of segments on the northern side. Thus, there may be no division at all, which would make the measurements match.

There are several shortcomings to my contention. First, it is still relying on suspect roof analysis. Second, extending the measurement is essentially a judgment call based on subjective perceptions of the roof. Either interpretation is legitimate. Third, classified imagery with higher resolution may trump my viewpoint. However, the goal of my analysis is to show that we cannot rule out the site because of the measurement of the roof, as an alternative measurement is plausible. The North Korean link is still probable due to other supporting evidence.

My second argument supporting the North Korean link is that the circumstantial evidence involving the pumping station and the quick clean-up is quite powerful. Although circumstantial evidence generally has a bad connotation, especially in courtrooms, the evidentiary requirements for analytic assessments and actions in the international arena are not as stringent as in the justice system. States almost never have perfect intelligence proving a claim one way or another. They are forced to rely on probabilistic claims. Israel still needed to act one way or another on the suspected site. Choosing to do nothing is still an action, and Israel had to weigh the consequences of doing nothing with undertaking the strike. We should not necessarily dismiss intelligence assessments because they rely on circumstantial evidence.

The presence of the pumping station provides a very strong argument for the claim that the site was a reactor. If the site was an unused military structure as the Syrians claim[39], then it would not need a pumping station. An unused military structure would not mandate quick clean-up afterwards either. Furthermore, an unused military structure would probably still have a clear perimeter, which almost all military facilities do. There is no perimeter in the image. A clandestine nuclear site may not have a clear perimeter, to help with concealment[40]. Finally, the fact that the pumping station was not present in 2003, but was present in 2007 is further proof that the site was in use. If it was for industrial purposes as Lewis has argued as a possibility, it would not need to be cleaned up so quickly afterward. It is also hard to imagine an industrial facility in such a remote location that would be so small and require a water pump. Furthermore, the Syrians have admitted that it was a military site, further disproving Lewis's claim. I assess the site prior to the Israeli attack as a probable nuclear reactor of North Korean origin.

Such an assessment fits with the actions of Israel and the U.S. as well. U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly were looking at the facility, but could not confirm what it was[41]. Without a water pump, it would indeed be difficult to discern. Once the Israelis saw the water pump go up, they would be understandably concerned. The water wouldn't be necessary till the reactor was ready to be in use. The pumping station could also be built very quickly, and thus could be delayed till near the end of the construction[42].

Another criticism of my view would argue that there is no cooling tower in the image. The lack of a cooling tower could undermine my analysis in two ways. First, the Yongbyon reactor has a cooling tower, undermining the comparison. Second, if the reactor really was close to operational, then it would need a cooling tower to operate. However, the reactor would not necessarily need a cooling tower. Although the North Koreans have chosen to have a cooling tower, perhaps for reasons of efficiency, the Syrians do not need a cooling tower. The Indian reactor Dhruva at Trombay, which is used to make weapons-grade plutonium[43], does not have a cooling tower.

Figure 4. The Indian Dhruva Nuclear Reactor. Although there are two waste stacks in the image, there are no cooling towers. Image Source: Google Earth

The Syrians could pipe steam used in cooling the reactor back into the river, and pump in cooler water from the river. The cooling tower is only necessary to cool water that is going to be reused. It is unclear what the environmental concerns of pumping hot water and steam into the Euphrates would have been. However, in the Syrian calculus the security benefit of having a nuclear weapon would almost certainly outweigh the environmental concerns and water waste.

Another criticism of my assessment may point out that the scenario is merely speculation. The critique could contend that floor space is not enough to confirm the purposes of a building[44]. Roofing similarities are a dubious comparison, as you still can't see inside the building. The U.S. had been watching the facility for years, and could not confirm whether the site was nuclear or not. Israel may have been understandably concerned, and acted with incomplete evidence. It is better to wait for more evidence before drawing a conclusion just from a box-shaped building. The criticism is very appealing, and holds a lot of merit. A careful analyst would certainly not want to claim that the site is certainly a reactor construction site. However, without any other plausible scenarios, and strong evidence that it is a reactor construction site, it merits the 'probable' label.

The assessment would be much stronger with several critical pieces of information. First, we would want to discern when the pumping station was built. Second, soil samples from the area could provide strong evidence that there was nuclear activity. There are claims that Israel has soil samples[45], but the claims have not been corroborated, and are questionably sourced[46]. Third, we would need a post-strike image, where we could see inside the building for elements of a nuclear reactor.

If the site was a reactor, it is difficult to assess how that would change Syria’s nuclear capabilities. It is unknown if anything nuclear-related was at the site, or if it survived. It is also possible that the site was not designed to support Syrian nuclear capabilities. Rather, it could have been an effort by North Korea to disperse or outsource their nuclear program. North Korea previously outsourced its missile testing to India and Pakistan[47]. Thus, Syria’s nuclear program may not have been the beneficiary of the possible reactor. If the site was a nuclear reactor meant to improve Syrian capabilities, it would have been able to produce enough plutonium in separated fuel for one bomb a year. However, the Syrians would also need a separation facility, which has not been located.

Although there are weaknesses to the claim that the suspected site was a nuclear reactor construction site of North Korean origin, I contend that it is probable. Albright and Brannan's conclusion is the most likely, as the critics’ arguments are generally flawed. However, Albright and Brannan's arguments would be stronger with the arguments that I have provided. Although I cannot offer a definitive answer, I aim to strengthen the debate by suggesting new possibilities and arguments.

Section III. Policy Recommendations

My assumption is that policy-makers will want to contain Syria's nuclear program. Given that Syria is a state-sponsor of terrorism, an enemy of Israel, and friendly with Iran, the geostrategic reasons for containing their nuclear program are compelling. I do not, however, believe that we need any major policy changes to continue to stem the growth of Syria's nuclear program. Israel's strike appears to have been a successful counter-proliferation action. However, there are several intelligence gaps as to whether the strike was a successful counter-proliferation action or not. The intelligence gaps also make it difficult to develop a strategy for confronting North Korea over the issue.

Policy Recommendation I. Fill in the intelligence gaps.

It is still unknown whether there was a reactor under construction in the building. Obtaining a post-strike image prior to the quick clean-up would be helpful in determining whether it was nuclear in nature. Such an image would also let us know whether the strike was successful in destroying the reactor. It is still unknown whether the reactor was completely destroyed or not. It is plausible that the strike missed, but Syria still wanted to clear the area to protect their nuclear material.

Determining whether Israel's soil sample claims are accurate should be an intelligence priority. It is possible that Israel wanted to further persuade the U.S. that the facility was a reactor, but that U.S. intelligence officers did not accept the Israeli interpretation. The soil sample claim could have been manufactured by the Israelis to improve the assessment[48]. However, the soil sample story could be completely accurate too. There isn’t sufficient intelligence to endorse either interpretation.

Policy Recommendation II. Engage Syria.

Although the Bush Administration has typically been reticent to negotiate with Syria, now could be the appropriate time for engagement. Syria's relative silence over the strike, rather than protesting Israel's actions, is a further indicator of guilt. Syria may now fear public embarrassment and sharp consequences, giving us a useful diplomatic tool that could be used as a carrot or as a stick. Refraining from publicizing the story could be useful in gaining trust and good will. The strike and our subsequent good will could show Syria the disadvantages of pursuing a path such as Iran's, and the benefits of non-proliferation. They may also see the disadvantages of cooperating with other proliferants, such as North Korea and Iran, and see the advantages of cooperating with the U.S. Their recent willingness to participate in the Annapolis Middle East Peace conference could be an early sign of such willingness.

To prevent future proliferation in Syria, we need to persuade Syria that their security concerns can be met without possessing nuclear weapons. Not only will successful engagement prevent future proliferation, but Syria may also provide important intelligence on other concerns. We may learn more about North Korean capabilities, Iranian capabilities, and the AQ Khan network. Now is an excellent opportunity for engagement, with the prospect of many significant benefits.

Appendix

Figure 5. Schematic of the MAGNOX reactor type[49]. The Yongbyon reactor and the suspected Syrian reactor would have a similar design.

Figure 6. Albright and Brannan's Analysis of the suspected site.

Figure 7. Close-up of the Heavy Water Reactor at the Savannah River Site. Analysis performed by Clayton Keir Image Source: Google Earth

Figure 8. Close-up of the Yongbyon 5 MW Reactor Area. There is steam coming out of the cooling tower. Analysis performed by Clayton Keir. Image Source: Google Earth

Works Cited

Albright, David and Brannan, Paul “Suspect Reactor Construction Site in Eastern Syria: The Site of the September 6 Israeli Raid?” The Institute for Science and International Security October 23, 2007. http://www.isisonline.org/publications/SuspectSite_24October2007.pdf

Albright, David, Brannan, Paul and Shire, Jacqueline “Syria Update: Suspect Reactor Site Dismantled.” The Institute for Science and International Security October 25, 2007. http://www.isis-online.org/publications/SyriaUpdate25October2007.pdf

Arms Control Association “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance.” October 2007 http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat.asp

Associated Press “Syrian President Tells BBC Israeli Warplanes Struck 'Unused Military Building' Last Month.” October 1, 2007 International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/01/africa/ME-GEN-Syria-Israel.php

Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, Home Page http://www.aec.org.sy/index_e.php

Barth, Kai-Henrik, Interview on various dates

Bowen, Wyn and Kidd, Joanna “The Nuclear Capabilities and Ambitions of Iran’s Neighbors.” Strategic Studies Institute October 2005

Broad, William and Mazzetti, Mark “Yet Another Photo of Site in Syria, Yet More Questions.” New York Times October 27, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/world/middleeast/27syria.html

Brown, Tim, Interview on various dates.

CIA World Factbook “Syria” December 6, 2007

Cirincione, Joseph in Wright, Robin and Warrick, Joby “Syrians Disassembling Ruins at Site Bombed by Israel, Officials Say.” Washington Post, October 19, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101802549.html

Cirincione, Joseph in Hounshell, Blake “North Korea-Syria nuclear ties: déjà vu all over again?” Foreign Policy September 14, 2007 http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6251

Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform, “Magnox Reactors” Copyright, 2007. http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/nuclear/technology/reactors/magnox/page27979.html

Digital Globe Images

Google Earth Images

Hoagland, Jim “North Korean Mystery.” October 7, 2007 Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100501765_pf.html

International Atomic Energy Agency “SYR/3/003 Uranium Recovery from Phosphoric Acid.”

Koch, Andrew “Selected Indian Nuclear Facilities.” July 1999 Center for Nonproliferation Studies http://cns.miis.edu/research/india/nuclear.htm

Lewis, Jeffrey “Ah, They Were SCUDs.” Arms Control Wonk September 20, 2007 http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1646/ah-they-were-scuds

Lewis, Jeffrey “More Syria Nonsense.” Arms Control Wonk October 22, 2007 http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1683/more-syria-nonsense

Lewis, Jeffrey “Syria Tidbits.” Arms Control Wonk October 26, 2007 http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1687/syria-tidbits

Normark, Magnus et al. “Syria and WMD: Intentions and Capabilities.” Swedish Defense Research Agency, June 2004 http://www2.foi.se/rapp/foir1290.pdf

Nuclear Threat Initiative “Syria Profile: Nuclear Chronology” June 2007 http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Syria/Nuclear/2079.html

Office of Technology Assessment “Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction.” U.S. Congress December 1993

Pike, John Globalsecurity October 24, 2007 http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/r-11-specs.htm

Pike, John, Interview on various dates.

Raddatz, Martha “The Case for Israel's Strike on Syria.” ABC News October 19, 2007 http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3752687

Raphaeli, Nimrod, Dr. “Middle East Economic News Report No. 36” Middle East Media Research Institute December 11, 2002 http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=economic&ID=EA3602

Raphaeli, Nimrod, Dr. “Syria's Fragile Economy” The Middle East Review of International Affairs, June 2007 http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a4.html

World Information Service on Energy “Uranium Recovery from Phosphates” October 23, 2007 http://www.wise-uranium.org/purec.html

[1] Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, Home Page October 9, 2007 http://www.aec.org.sy/index_e.php

[2] Normark, Magnus et al. “Syria and WMD: Intentions and Capabilities.” Swedish Defense Research Agency, June 2004 http://www2.foi.se/rapp/foir1290.pdf pg. 30

[3] Ibid.

[4] Nuclear Threat Initiative “Syria Profile: Nuclear Chronology” June 2007 http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Syria/Nuclear/2079.html

[5] Normark et al. pg. 55

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid. pg. 30

[8] Argument credited to Professor Kai-Henrik Barth

[9] World Information Service on Energy “Uranium Recovery from Phosphates” October 23, 2007 http://www.wise-uranium.org/purec.html

[10] IAEA “SYR/3/003 Uranium Recovery from Phosphoric Acid.” Click here and then select 'Syrian Arab Republic' and 'completed projects.' De-select 'active projects.'

[11] Nuclear Threat Initiative

[12] Ibid.

[13] Bowen, Wyn and Kidd, Joanna “The Nuclear Capabilities and Ambitions of Iran’s Neighbors.” Strategic Studies Institute October 2005 pg. 73

[14] Ibid.

[15] Arms Control Association “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance.” October 2007 http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat.asp

[16] Bowen and Kidd, pg. 73

[17] CIA World Factbook “Syria” December 6, 2007 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/sy.html

[18] Office of Technology Assessment “Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction.” U.S. Congress December 1993 pg. 126

[19] Ibid.

[20] Raphaeli, Nimrod, Dr. “Middle East Economic News Report No. 36” Middle East Media Research Institute December 11, 2002 http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=economic&ID=EA3602

Raphaeli, Nimrod, Dr. “Syria's Fragile Economy” The Middle East Review of International Affairs, June 2007 http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a4.html

[21] Ibid.

[22] Normark et al. pg. 27

[23] Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, Home Page

[24] Cirincione, Joseph in Wright, Robin and Warrick, Joby “Syrians Disassembling Ruins at Site Bombed by Israel, Officials Say.” Washington Post, October 19, 2007

[25] Albright, David and Brannan, Paul “Suspect Reactor Construction Site in Eastern Syria : The Site of the September 6 Israeli Raid?” The Institute for Science and International Security October 23, 2007 . http://www.isis-online.org/publications/SuspectSite_24October2007.pdf

[26] Albright, David, Brannan, Paul and Shire, Jacqueline “ Syria Update: Suspect Reactor Site Dismantled” The Institute for Science and International Security October 25, 2007 . http://www.isis-online.org/publications/SyriaUpdate25October2007.pdf

[27] Wright and Warrick Joby “Syrians Disassembling Ruins at Site Bombed by Israel, Officials Say.”

[28] Cirincione, Joseph in Hounshell, Blake “North Korea-Syria nuclear ties: déjà vu all over again?” Foreign Policy September 14, 2007 http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6251

[29] Broad, William and Mazzetti, Mark “Yet Another Photo of Site in Syria, Yet More Questions.” New York Times October 27, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/world/middleeast/27syria.html

[30] Raddatz, Martha “The Case for Israel's Strike on Syria .” ABC News October 19, 2007 http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3752687

[31] Lewis, Jeffrey “More Syria Nonsense.” Arms Control Wonk October 22, 2007 http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1683/more-syria-nonsense

[32] Lewis, Jeffrey “Ah, They Were SCUDs.” Arms Control Wonk September 20, 2007 http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1646/ah-they-were-scuds

[33] Measurement performed in Google Earth.

[34] Pike, John Globalsecurity October 24, 2007 http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/r-11-specs.htm

[35] Lewis, Jeffrey “Syria Tidbits.” Arms Control Wonk October 26, 2007 http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1687/syria-tidbits

[36] Normark et al. pg. 29

[37] Interview with John Pike, various dates

[38] Interview with Imagery Analyst Tim Brown

[39] Associated Press “Syrian President Tells BBC Israeli Warplanes Struck 'Unused Military Building' Last Month.” October 1, 2007 International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/01/africa/ME-GEN-Syria-Israel.php

[40] Interview with John Pike, Director of Globalsecurity.org on various dates.

[41] Broad and Mazzetti

[42] Interview with John Pike

[43] Koch, Andrew “Selected Indian Nuclear Facilities.” July 1999 Center for Nonproliferation Studies http://cns.miis.edu/research/india/nuclear.htm

[44] Interview with Tim Brown, Imagery Analyst

[45] Hoagland, Jim “North Korean Mystery.” October 7, 2007 Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100501765_pf.html

[46] Argument made by John Pike, in an interview on December 7, 2007.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Interview with John Pike, December 7, 2007

[49] Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform, “Magnox Reactors” Copyright, 2007. http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/nuclear/technology/reactors/magnox/page27979.html

Fax Machines (circa 1930)

Fax Machines (circa 1930) - video link

A fascinating look at the innovative technology of the scanner/fax.

F-16 vs C-130

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by.

The jet jockey decided to show off.

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, "Watch this!" and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb.

He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that.

The C-130 pilot said, "That was impressive, but watch this!"

The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back on and said, "What did you think of that?"

Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, "What did you do?"

The C-130 pilot chuckled. "I stood up, stretched my legs, walked to the back, went to the bathroom, then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun."

When you are young and foolish, speed and flash may seem a good thing. When you get older and smarter, dull and comfortable doesn't seem so bad!

Farmer Makes Music With Hands (1933)

Farmer Makes Music With Hands (1933) - video link

Farmer Cecil Dill, of Traverse City, Michigan, an aspiring radio artist, demostrates his ability to render popular melodies by pressing his hands together, creating a juvenile sound. Dill modestly tells how he discovered his amazing talent.

If you enjoyed that fine performance by Cecil Dill, the first manualist, you might also like the following act. Join Bruce Gaston, AKA Mr. Handman, and Ken Purcell in their version of this time-honored song.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart - A Manualist Tribute to Cecil Dill

43 Retired Generals and Admirals to U.S. Senate: Standardize Interrogations

[cartoons & emphasis added by me]

February 12, 2008

The Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman
The United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Christopher S. Bond, Vice Chairman
The United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20510



Dear Chairman Rockefeller and Vice Chairman Bond:

As retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).

We believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat.

The current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel – military and civilian – should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual.

The Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated in 2006 to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate.

General David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual:

What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight . . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect….

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

Employing interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism.

This is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message – to U.S. personnel and to the world – that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions.

Sincerely,

General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)
General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)
General Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)
General David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)
General Barry McCaffrey, USA (Ret.)
General Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)
Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)
General William G. T. Tuttle Jr., USA (Ret.)
General Charles E. Wilhelm, USMC (Ret.)
General Anthony Zinni (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard Jr., USA (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Henry J. Hatch, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)
Major General Leo M. Childs, USA (Ret.)
Major General James P. Collins, USA (Ret.)
Major General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.)
Major General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)
Major General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)
Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.)
Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)
Major General Eric Olson, USA (Ret.)
Major General Thomas J. Romig, USA (Ret.)
Major General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)
Major General Antonio ‘Tony’ M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Dorian Anderson, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)
Brigadier General Clarke M. Brintnall, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Gerald E. Galloway, USA (Ret)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Richard O’Meara, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)
Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)

General Hoar served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command. After the first Gulf War, General Hoar led the effort to enforce the naval embargo in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and to enforce the no-fly zone in the south of Iraq. He oversaw the humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Kenya and Somalia and also supported operations in Rwanda, and the evacuation of U.S. civilians from Yemen during the 1994 civil war. He was the Deputy for Operations for the Marine Corps during the Gulf War and served as General Norman Schwarzkopf's Chief of Staff at Central Command. General Hoar currently runs a consulting business in California.

General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)

In November 2004, General Paul Kern concluded his more than 40-year career in the United States Army when he retired as Commanding General, Army Materiel Command (AMC). In June 2004, Secretary Rumsfeld tapped him to lead the military's internal investigation into the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Prior to his command at AMC, he served as the military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology and was the senior military advisor to the Army Acquisition Executive and the Army Chief of Staff on all research, development, and acquisition programs and related issues. As the Senior Military Assistant to Secretary of Defense William Perry, General Kern was instrumental in ensuring that the Secretary's guidance was implemented throughout the Department. During that tenure he traveled with Secretary Perry to more than 70 countries, participated in U.S. operations in Haiti, Rwanda, Zaire and the Balkans, and helped to promote military relations in Central and Eastern Europe, South America, China, and the Middle East. General Kern had three combat tours during his illustrious career with two tours in Vietnam as a platoon leader and troop commander, and he commanded the Second Brigade of the 24th Infantry in Desert Shield/Desert Storm. During his career, General Kern received the Defense and Army Distinguished Service Medals, Silver Star, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals for valor, three Bronze Star Medals for service in combat, and three Purple Hearts.

General Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)

General Krulak served as the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1995 to June 1999. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy; the Amphibious Warfare School; the Army Command and General Staff College; and the National War College. He also holds a master's degree in labor relations from George Washington University. General Krulak has held a variety of command and staff positions including Commanding Officer of a platoon and two rifle companies during two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was also assigned duty as the Deputy Director of the White House Military Office in September 1987, and he commanded the 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade and 2d FSSG during the Gulf War.

General David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)

General Maddox served in the U.S. Army from 1960 until 1995. He retired after serving as Commander in Chief, U.S. Army in Europe. While on active duty, General Maddox served extensively overseas with four tours in Germany during which he commanded at every level from platoon through NATO's Central Army Group, 7th U.S. Army and theater. His last six years of active duty were in Europe transitioning from the Cold War, through Desert Storm, to the total reengineering of our presence and mission in Europe. Since retirement, General Maddox has been an independent consultant to civilian corporations, government agencies, and defense industries regarding concepts, systems requirements, program strategies, operations and systems effectiveness, and analytic techniques and analyses. He has served on the Defense Science Board, is a member of the Army Science Board, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Corporation of the Draper
Laboratory, and The Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs.

General Barry McCaffrey, USA (Ret.)

Barry McCaffrey served in the United States Army for 32 years and retired as a four-star General. At retirement he was the most highly decorated serving General, having been awarded three Purple Heart medals for wounds received in his four combat tours - as well as twice awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest award for valor. He also twice was awarded the Silver Star for valor. For five years after leaving the military, Barry McCaffrey served as the nation's Cabinet Officer in charge of U.S. Drug Policy. He was confirmed for this position by unanimous vote by the U.S. Senate. For this period of public service, General McCaffrey received many honors including: the Department of Health and Human Service Lifetime Achievement Award for Extraordinary Achievements in the Field of Substance Abuse Prevention (2004), the United States Coast Guard Distinguished Public Service Award, the Norman E. Zinberg Award of the Harvard Medical School, the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation's National Service Award, and the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America Lifetime Achievement Award. After leaving government service, Barry McCaffrey served for five years (2001-2005) as the Bradley Distinguished Professor of International Security Studies at West Point. He continues as an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs. Barry McCaffrey graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. in 1960; from West Point with a BS in 1964; earned an MA degree in American Government from American University; and attended the Harvard University National Security Program as well as the Business School Executive Education Program.

General Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)

General McPeak served as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Previously, General McPeak served as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces. He is a command pilot, having flown more than 6,000 hours, principally in fighter aircraft.

Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)

During his service in the United States Navy, Admiral Turner commanded a mine sweeper, a destroyer, a guided-missile cruiser, a carrier task group and a fleet. He also was President of the Naval War College. Admiral Stansfield Turner's last naval assignment was as Commander in Chief of NATO's Southern Flank. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed Turner as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He served in the post until January 1981. In recent years he has worked as a lecturer, writer and TV commentator. Since 1991 he has been teaching at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. Admiral Turner serves on the Board of Direction of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars, as well as on the boards of other organizations.

General William G. T. Tuttle Jr., USA (Ret.)

General Tuttle served for nearly 34 years in the U.S. Army and retired following command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. He served tours in Vietnam, Korea, and Europe and his military experience included leadership of the Army Logistics Center, Operational Test and Evaluation Agency, and four logistics commands as well as operations analysis and force management responsibilities on Army and NATO staffs. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medals of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Department of Defense.

General Charles E. Wilhelm, USMC (Ret.)

General Charles E. Wilhelm retired from the United States Marine Corps in November of 2000 after almost 38 years of active service. In his final assignment, General Wilhelm served as Commander in Chief of the United States Southern Command. In that capacity he was responsible for all military activities in the 32 countries of the Caribbean, Central, and South America. During his 12 years as a General Officer, he served in a variety of positions. After his initial assignment as Director of Marine Corps Operations, General Wilhelm served as a Deputy Secretary of Defense during the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush. Returning from the first Persian Gulf War, he assumed command of the 1st Marine Division. Relinquishing command of the division after its return from combat operations in Somalia, he served as Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, and the II Marine Expeditionary Force before concluding his career at Southern Command. During his Marine Corps career, General Wilhelm commanded at every level and participated in contingencies and combat operations in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Liberia, Haiti and the Middle East. His decorations and awards include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), Silver Star Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal (two awards), Bronze Star Medal with combat “V”, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal with combat “V”, Army Commendation Medal with combat “V”, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Navy Achievement Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon. He was also decorated by the governments of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Vietnam. Since his retirement, General Wilhelm has has served as a corporate executive with the Battelle Memorial Institute, is a member of several boards of directors, provides consultant and advisory services to both government and non-government agencies, and he devotes considerable time to a variety of Department of Defense and Homeland Security activities. Recently, he traveled to Iraq as a volunteer member of the congressionally directed Jones Commission to assess security and stability conditions in that country. General Wilhelm is a native of Edenton, North Carolina. He received his undergraduate degree from Florida Southern College, his graduate degree from Salve Regina College, and he holds an honorary doctorate from Florida Southern. He resides in Villa Rica, Georgia, with his wife Valerie.

General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.)

General Zinni joined the Marine Corps in 1961 and has held numerous command and staff assignments that include platoon, company, battalion, regimental, Marine expeditionary unit, and Marine expeditionary force command. His military service has taken him to over 70 countries including deployments to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Western Pacific, Northern Europe and Korea. He has also served tours in Okinawa and Germany. His operational experiences include two tours in Vietnam, emergency relief and security operations in the Philippines, Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey and northern Iraq, Operation Provide Hope in the former Soviet Union, Operations Restore Hope, Continue Hope, and United Shield in Somalia, Operations Resolute Response and Noble Response in Kenya, Operations Desert Thunder, Desert Fox, Desert Viper, Desert Spring, Southern Watch and the Maritime Intercept Operations in the Persian Gulf, and Operation Infinite Reach against terrorist targets in the Central Region. He was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Proven Force and Operation Patriot Defender in support of the Gulf War and noncombatant evacuation operations in Liberia, Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Eritrea. He has also participated in presidential diplomatic missions to Somalia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia-Eritrea and State Department missions involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conflicts in Indonesia and the Philippines. General Zinni's awards include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster; the Distinguished Service Medal; the Defense Superior Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters; the Bronze Star with Combat "V" and gold star, the Purple Heart; the Meritorious Service Medal with gold star-, the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat "V" and gold star; the Navy Achievement Medal with gold star; the Combat Action Ribbon; and personal decorations from South Vietnam, France, Italy, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, and Bahrain. He also holds 36 unit, service, and campaign awards.

Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard Jr., USA (Ret.)

General Gard is a retired Lieutenant General who served in the United States Army; his military assignments included combat service in Korea and Vietnam. He is currently a consultant on international security and president emeritus of the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)

Vice Admiral Gunn served as the Inspector General of the Department of the Navy from 1997 until retirement in August 2000. Admiral Gunn's sea duty included: command of the frigate USS Barbey; command of Destroyer Squadron 31, the Navy's tactical and technical development anti-submarine warfare squadron; and command of Amphibious Group Three, supporting the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Southwest Asia and East Africa. Gunn is from Bakersfield, California and is a graduate of UCLA, having received his commission from the Naval ROTC program at UCLA in June 1965.

Lieutenant General Henry J. Hatch, USA (Ret.)

In 1992 Henry J. (Hank) Hatch retired from the Army as a Lieutenant General, the Chief of Engineers and Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He is an active volunteer with several professional organizations including the National Research Council (NRC) (the operating arm of the National Academies of Engineering and Science), the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the US National Commission for UNESCO. Hatch earned his Bachelors from West Point and his Masters from the Ohio State University. He is a registered professional engineer in the District of Columbia, a Distinguished Member of ASCE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)

General Kennedy is the first and only woman to achieve the rank of three-star general in the United States Army. Kennedy served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Army Intelligence, Commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, and as Commander of the 703d military intelligence brigade in Kunia, Hawaii.

Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)

Lieutenant General Kerrick retired from the U.S. Army in 2001 after a 30-year military career. His assignments included Deputy National Security Advisor to the President of the United States; Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Chief of Staff/Staff Director, the National Security Council, The White House; Director of Operations, Defense Intelligence Agency; the Army Staff, Commander 701st Military Intelligence Brigade and Field Station Augsburg, Germany; and Commander 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion (Aerial Exploitation), Korea. General Kerrick also served, by Presidential appointment, as a principal negotiator on the international Bosnia Peace Delegation that ended the Bosnian War. He later was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Steering Committee for the Protection of United States Critical Infrastructure that developed the blueprint for the structure and procedures designed to protect national critical infrastructure. Kerrick currently serves as the vice president of strategic business development for a major defense company.

Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)

Vice Admiral Konetzni served as the Deputy and Chief of Staff, of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and Deputy Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, where he was responsible for 160 ships, nearly 1,200 aircraft and 50 bases manned by more than 133,000 personnel. He has also served as Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet; Commander, Submarine Group Seven (Yokosuka, Japan); and Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Personnel Policy and Career Progression. Admiral Konetzni has received two Distinguished Service Medals, six awards of the Legion of Merit, and three awards of the Meritorious Service Medal for his Naval Service. His Homeland Security efforts have earned him the U.S. Coast Guard Distinguished Service Medal.

Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)

General Otstott served 32 years in the Army. As an Infantryman, he commanded at every echelon including command of the 25th Infantry Division (Light) from 1988-1990. His service included two combat tours in Vietnam. He completed his service in uniform as Deputy Chairman, NATO Military Committee, 1990-1992.

Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)

Lieutenant General Soyster served as Director, Defense Intelligence Agency during DESERT SHIELD/STORM. He also served as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army, Commanding General, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command and in the Joint Reconnaissance Center, Joint Chiefs of Staff. In Vietnam he was an operations officer in a field artillery battalion. Upon retirement he was VP for International Operations with Miltary Professional Resources Incorporated and returned to government as Special Assistant to the SEC ARMY for WWII 60th Anniversary Commemorations completed in 2006.

Major General Leo M. Childs, USA (Ret.)

Leo Childs spent over 33 years in the US Army Signal Corps, retiring in 1993 as a Major General. He was the 24th Chief of Signal and concurrently commanded the US Army Signal Center and Fort Gordon, Georgia. Other Command assignments included the 82nd Signal Battalion (Airborne Division), the 35th Signal Group (XVIII Airborne Corps), Commanding General of the 5th Signal Command in support of the US Army Europe with simultaneous duties as Commander of the Worms, Germany Military Community and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Information Management, HQ USAREUR and 7th Army. Two tours in Vietnam included duty with the 1st Infantry Division. Other staff assignments were at Headquarters, Department of the Army, and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. His final assignment was as the Director Command, Control, and Communications Systems (J6), United States Pacific Command. Leo holds BA and MA degrees respectively from Northeastern and Georgetown Universities.

Major General James P. Collins, USA (Ret.)

(Biographical information forthcoming)

Major General Paul D. Eaton, USA (Ret.)

General Eaton recently retired from the U.S. Army after more than 33 years service. His assignments include Infantry command from the company to brigade levels, command of the Infantry Center at Fort Benning and Chief of Infantry. His most recent operational assignment was Commanding General of the command charged with reestablishing Iraqi Security Forces 2003-2004, where he built the command and established the structure and infrastructure for the Iraqi Armed Forces. Other operational assignments include Somalia, Bosnia and Albania. Other assignments include the Joint Staff, Deputy Commanding General for Transformation and Stryker Unit Development and Assistant Professor and head of the French Department at West Point. He is a 1972 graduate of West Point.

Major General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)

Major General Fox retired from the U.S Army in 1989 after 33 years of service. He commanded Field Artillery and Air Defense Units from platoon to brigade level, instructed in a service school, and served in various capacities in the acquisition of DoD weapons systems to include several years as program manager. His last active duty position was the Deputy Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Office. Subsequent to military retirement General Fox has served as a Defense Consultant for various companies and government agencies.

Major General John Fugh, USA (Ret.)

General Fugh was The Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army, retiring from that post in July 1993 as a Major General. General Fugh was 15 years old when he migrated to the United States with his family from China. He was the first Chinese-American to attain General officer status in the U.S. Army. General Fugh currently lives in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Brigadier General Gerald E. Galloway, USA (Ret)

Brigadier General Galloway, PhD, served 38 years in the Army, retiring in 1995 as Dean of the Academic Board (chief academic officer) of the USMA Military Academy. Subsequent to retirement he served as Dean of the Faculty and Academic Programs at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University. He has been active in ethics education at the college and professional level. He served two tours in Vietnam.

Rear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)

Admiral Guter served in the U.S. Navy for 32 years, concluding his career as the Navy’s Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002. Admiral Guter currently serves as the Dean of Duquesne University Law School in Pittsburgh, PA

Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)

General Haynes is a combat veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He was a captain in the regiment that seized Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima and raised the American flag there, February 23, 1945. In Korea, he was Executive Officer of the 2nd Bn, 1st Marines. During Vietnam, he commanded the Fifth Marines, and was G-3 of the Third Marine Amphibious Force. During the Kennedy and Johnson eras, he served as Pentagon Director, Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. As a general officer he commanded the Second and Third Marine Divisions. He was the Senior Member of the United Nations Military Armistice Commission in Korea, and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Marine Corps Research and Development. He is chairman of the Combat Veterans of Iwo Jima, Chairman Emeritus of the American Turkish Council and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Haynes lives in New York and is currently writing a book, The Lions of Iwo Jima: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle of Marine Corps History.

Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, JAGC, USN (Ret.)

Rear Admiral John D. Hutson served in the U. S. Navy from 1973 to 2000. He was the Navy's Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000. Admiral Hutson now serves as President and Dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. He also joined Human Rights First’s Board of Directors in 2005.

Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)

General Montano was the adjutant general in charge of the National Guard in New Mexico from 1994 to 1999. He served in Vietnam and was the first Hispanic Air National Guard officer appointed as an adjutant general in the country.

Major General Eric Olson, USA (Ret.)

General Olson achieved the rank of Major General before retiring from the United States Army in January 2006. He began his distinguished military career after graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1972. His first duty position was as platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Carson, Colorado. Subsequently, General Olson has commanded at every level from platoon to division, spending his last three
years of service as the Commanding General of the 25th Infantry Division (Light). General Olson also served as the Commander of Combined, Joint Task Force 76, responsible for all security and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan. In his 33-year military career, General Olson has held several staff positions in joint, combined, and the Department of the Army staffs. He was also the 68th Commandant of Cadets at the United States Military Academy, West Point from 2000 to 2002. General Olson currently serves as the Chief of Staff and Special Advisor to the Special Inspector general for Iraq Reconstruction.

Major General Thomas J. Romig, USA (Ret.)

Major General Romig served for four years as the 36th Judge Advocate General of the Army. His significant military legal positions included Chief of Army Civil Law and Litigation and Chief of Military Law and Operations. His other military legal assignments included Chief of Planning for the JAG Corps; Chief Legal Officer for the 32d Army Air Defense Command in Europe; and Chief Legal Officer for U.S. Army V Corps and U.S. Army forces in the Balkans. Prior to becoming a military lawyer, he served six years as a military intelligence officer. Major General Romig graduated with honors from the Santa Clara University School of Law in 1980. After 34 years of service, he retired from the Army JAG Corps. He served as Deputy Chief Counsel for Operations and Acting Chief Counsel for the Federal Aviation Administration and is currently Dean of Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas.

Major General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)

Major General Sajer was the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania from l987-1995. He served as the assistant Division Commander for maneuver of the 28th Infantry Division, and previously served as the Division's chief of staff and G-3. During the Korean War, he served as a Captain. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, General Sajer practiced law in the Harrisburg area for 30 years, specializing in civil litigation. He and his wife have been married for 50 years and have 6 children and 15 grandchildren. They live on a farm near Gettysburg.

Major General Antonio ‘Tony’ M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)

Major General, Antonio ‘Tony’ M. Taguba, USA (Ret.) served 34 years on active duty until his retirement on 1 January 2007. He has served in numerous leadership and staff positions most recently as Deputy Commanding General, Combined Forces Land Component Command during Operations Iraqi Freedom in Kuwait and Iraq, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, and as Deputy Commanding General for Transformation, US Army Reserve Command. Born in Manila, Philippines in 1950, he graduated from Idaho State University in 1972 with a BA degree in History. He holds MA degrees from Webster University in Public Administration, Salve Regina University in International Relations, and US Naval War College in National Security and Strategic Studies.

Brigadier General Dorian Anderson, USA (Ret.)

General Anderson served 30 years as a Commissioned Officer and later as a Flag Officer US Army, holding leadership and command positions at all levels as an Infantry Officer culminating as Commanding General, US Army Human Resources Command, Alexandria, VA. General Anderson is a 1975 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, holds an MA in Management from Webster University and is a 1995 graduate of the US Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, PA. He is a 2006 graduate of The Executive Program at University of Virginia’s Darden Business School.

Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)

General Brahms served in the Marine Corps from 1963-1988. He served as the Marine Corps' senior legal adviser from 1983 until his retirement in 1988. General Brahms currently practices law in Carlsbad, California and sits on the board of directors of the Judge Advocates Association.

Brigadier General Clarke M. Brintnall, USA (Ret.)

Clarke "Pete" Brintnall retired from the Army as a brigadier general in 1988 after serving as Director of the Inter-American Region and acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Inter-American Affairs. Following his retirement he was National Security Council Director of Latin American Affairs. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy.

Brigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)

Mr. Cullen is a retired Brigadier General in the United States Army Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps and last served as the Chief Judge (IMA) of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. He currently practices law in New York City.

Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)

General Foote was Commanding General of Fort Belvoir in 1989. She was recalled to active duty in 1996 to serve as Vice Chair of the Secretary of the Army's Senior Review Panel on Sexual Harassment. She is President of the Alliance for National Defense, a non-profit organization.

Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General Irvine enlisted in the 96th Infantry Division, United States Army Reserve, in 1962. He received a direct commission in 1967 as a strategic intelligence officer. He maintained a faculty assignment for 18 years with the Sixth U.S. Army Intelligence School, and taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for several hundred soldiers, Marines, and airmen. He retired in 2002, and his last assignment was Deputy Commander for the 96th Regional Readiness Command. General Irvine is an attorney, and practices law in Salt Lake City, Utah. He served 4 terms as a Republican legislator in the Utah House of Representatives, has served as a congressional chief of staff, and served as a commissioner on the Utah Public Utilities Commission.

Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret), Ph.D., served in Vietnam and was a key member of a group that developed the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine in the early 1960s at Ft. Bragg and later in the Pentagon. After retirement from active duty, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and then as a professor at the National Defense University for 14 years, where he specialized in National Security Strategy.

Brigadier General Richard O’Meara, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General Richard O’Meara is a combat decorated veteran who fought in Vietnam before earning his law degree and joining the Army's Judge Advocate General Corps. He retired from the Army Reserves in 2002 and now teaches courses on Human Rights and History at Kean University and at Monmouth University.

Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General Sagsveen entered the U.S. Army in 1968, with initial service in the Republic of Korea. He later joined the North Dakota Army National Guard. His assignments included Staff Judge Advocate for the 164th Engineer Group, Staff Judge Advocate for the State Area Command, Special Assistant to the National Guard Bureau Judge Advocate, and Army National Guard Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General of the Army. He completed the U.S. Army War College in 1988. At the time of his retirement in 1996, he was a brigadier general and the senior judge advocate in the Army National Guard. General Sagsveen currently serves as the general counsel of the American Academy of Neurology in St. Paul, Minnesota. In February 2004, he participated in a medical conference in Baghdad, Iraq, and he has been participating in an effort among U.S. specialty medical societies to assist physicians in that country.

Brigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)

Brigadier General Verrengia retired from the USAF in 1989, after 38 years of uniformed service. He is a veteran of the Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War. He is a Master Navigator, who flew in all types of Military Air Transport Operations for over twenty years. During his career he also held Command and Staff positions in Operations, Plans, Logistics, Training and Personnel, and served at all levels of Air Force Command from the Squadron to Numbered AF, to Major Air Command, to the Air Staff in Washington, DC He is a Graduate of the Air Command and Staff College, The Air War College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and the National War College.

Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)

Dr. Stephen N. Xenakis has served in the U.S. Army, as well as in healthcare management, academic medicine, and clinical practice. He retired from the Army in 1998 at the rank of Brigadier General and held many high level positions, including Commanding General of the Southeast Regional Army Medical Command. He currently serves as the Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.

.50 Caliber Ricochet - It Ain't Whistlin' Dixie

Firearms safety rule #4: Be sure of your target.

Guy hit in head with .50 caliber ricochet [SFW] video link.

AKA "Why you don't want to shoot a 750 grain bullet at a piece of metal this close."

Rules of Gun Safety

See Examples of All the Rules

The Camouflage Art of Bev Doolittle

"Christmas Day, Give Or Take A Week"

"Doubled Back"

"Let My Spirit Soar"

"Music In The Wind"

"Pintos"

"Spirit Of The Grizzly"

"The Forest Has Eyes"

Bev Doolittle Gallery

Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2008

Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2008

A Report to Congress Pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act Fiscal Year 2000

Section 1202, “Annual Report on Military Power of the People’s Republic of China,” of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, Public Law 106-65, provides that the Secretary of Defense shall submit a report “on the current and future military strategy of the People’s Republic of China. The report shall address the current and probable future course of military-technological development on the People’s Liberation Army and the tenets and probable development of Chinese grand strategy, security strategy, and military strategy, and of the military organizations and operational concepts, through the next 20 years.”

Executive Summary

China’s rapid rise over recent years as a regional political and economic power with growing global influence is an important element in today’s strategic landscape, one that has significant implications for the region and the world. The United States welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China. No country has done more to assist, facilitate, and encourage China’s national development and its integration in the international system. The United States continues to encourage China to participate as a responsible international stakeholder by taking on a greater share of responsibility for the stability, resilience and growth of the global system. However, much uncertainty surrounds China’s future course, in particular in the area of its expanding military power and how that power might be used.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning shortduration, high intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries – an approach that China refers to as preparing for “local wars under conditions of informatization.” China’s ability to sustain military power at a distance remains limited but, as noted in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, it “has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages.”

China’s near-term focus on preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait, including the possibility of U.S. intervention, is an important driver of its modernization. However, analysis of China’s military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also developing capabilities for use in other contingencies, such as conflict over resources or disputed territories.

The pace and scope of China’s military transformation have increased in recent years, fueled by acquisition of advanced foreign weapons, continued high rates of investment in its domestic defense and science and technology industries, and far reaching organizational and doctrinal reforms of the armed forces. China’s expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China’s strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region.

China’s nuclear force modernization, as evidence by the fielding of the new DF-31 and DF-31A intercontinental-range missiles, is enhancing China’s strategic strike capabilities. China’s emergent anti-access/area denial capabilities – as exemplified by its continued development of advanced cruise missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles designed to strike ships at sea, including aircraft carriers, and the January 2007 successful test of a direct-ascent, anti-satellite weapon – are expanding from the land, air, and sea dimensions of the traditional battlefield into the space and cyber-space domains.

The international community has limited knowledge of the motivations, decision-making, and key capabilities supporting China’s military modernization. China’s leaders have yet to explain in detail the purposes and objectives of the PLA’s modernizing military capabilities. For example, China continues to promulgate incomplete defense expenditure figures, and engage in actions that appear inconsistent with its declaratory policies. The lack of transparency in China’s military and security affairs poses risks to stability by increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation. This situation will naturally and understandably lead to hedging against the unknown.

Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2008 (PDF Download 2.34 MB) - OR - View as HTML

Initiation

George H. W. Bush (left of clock) with the Skull and Crossbones group at Yale University, New Haven, CT - circa 1947.

For a long time it was denied... that Prescott Bush, George H. W. Bush and current U.S. President George W. Bush are all "old school" members of the Skull and Bones chapter 322.

In recent years, the mainstream media has acknowledged this to be the case and photographs such as we see here have become widely circulated. Indeed a picture tells a thousand words.

The ridiculously staged 2004 U.S. Presidential elections brought much light to such facts, when both major running candidates (J.F. Kerry and G.W. Bush) were both Skull and Bones members, "tapped" in the late sixties.

Of course, now that we have the general acknowledgement of known members pervading top positions of U.S. politics, the inevitable spin is implanted that...

"Oh, these are just silly men blowing off steam... it doesn't mean anything sinister".

Los Angeles, 1967 - Ronald Reagan dips his hand into a plate of sunny side up eggs while riding a wooden horse blindfolded as part of his initiation into the Downtown Breakfast Club.

But, for those who believe there IS a sinister secret society ruling the world...

Ritual Ceremony at the Bohemian Grove

Ronald Regan (then b-movie actor), Richard Nixon (3 years before the 1960 Kennedy election) and Glenn T. Seaborg (discoverer of plutonium) at the Bohemian Grove, 1957.

Hold on to your back buttons folks, it gets a little crazy here...

The Dark Secrets Inside the Bohemian Grove with David Icke

For more secret society conspiracy theories, visit The Secrets of Bohemian Grove... if you dare.

[Warning: Conspiracy theories house moonbats.]

Geologists Discover New Way of Estimating Size and Frequency of Meteorite Impacts

Scientists have developed a new way of determining the size and frequency of meteorites that have collided with Earth.

Their work shows that the size of the meteorite that likely plummeted to Earth at the time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary 65 million years ago was four to six kilometers in diameter. The meteorite was the trigger, scientists believe, for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms.

François Paquay, a geologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), used variations (isotopes) of the rare element osmium in sediments at the ocean bottom to estimate the size of these meteorites. The results are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

When meteorites collide with Earth, they carry a different osmium isotope ratio than the levels normally seen throughout the oceans.

"The vaporization of meteorites carries a pulse of this rare element into the area where they landed," says Rodey Batiza of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research along with NSF's Division of Earth Sciences. "The osmium mixes throughout the ocean quickly. Records of these impact-induced changes in ocean chemistry are then preserved in deep-sea sediments."

Paquay analyzed samples from two sites, Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) site 1219 (located in the Equatorial Pacific), and ODP site 1090 (located off of the tip of South Africa) and measured osmium isotope levels during the late Eocene period, a time during which large meteorite impacts are known to have occurred.

ROPOS arm using a push-core to sample Holocene (present time) sediments with Pleistocene (12000 + years old) clay beneath it.

"The record in marine sediments allowed us to discover how osmium changes in the ocean during and after an impact," says Paquay.

The scientists expect that this new approach to estimating impact size will become an important complement to a more well-known method based on iridium.

Paquay, along with co-author Gregory Ravizza of UHM and collaborators Tarun Dalai from the Indian Institute of Technology and Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, also used this method to make estimates of impact size at the K-T boundary.

Even though these method works well for the K-T impact, it would break down for an event larger than that: the meteorite contribution of osmium to the oceans would overwhelm existing levels of the element, researchers believe, making it impossible to sort out the osmium's origin.

Under the assumption that all the osmium carried by meteorites is dissolved in seawater, the geologists were able to use their method to estimate the size of the K-T meteorite as four to six kilometers in diameter.

The potential for recognizing previously unknown impacts is an important outcome of this research, the scientists say.

"We know there were two big impacts, and can now give an interpretation of how the oceans behaved during these impacts," says Paquay. "Now we can look at other impact events, both large and small."

Public Schools Spent $9,138 Per Student in 2006

School districts in the United States spent an average of $9,138 per student in fiscal year 2006, an increase of $437 from 2005, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released April, 2008.

Public Education Finances: 2006 offers a comprehensive look at the revenues and expenditures of public school districts at the national and state levels. The report includes detailed tables that allow for the calculation of per pupil expenditures. Highlights from these tables include spending on instruction, support services, construction, salaries and benefits of the more than 15,000 school districts. Public school districts include elementary and secondary school systems.

School Districts with the Highest and Lowest Spending Per Student. Public school systems received $521.1 billion in funding from federal, state and local sources in 2006, a 6.7 percent increase over 2005. Total expenditures reached $526.6 billion, a 6 percent increase. (See Table 1.)

State governments contributed the greatest share of funding to public school systems (47 percent), followed by local sources (44 percent) and the federal government (9 percent). (See Table 5.)

School district spending per pupil was highest in New York ($14,884), followed by New Jersey ($14,630) and the District of Columbia ($13,446). States where school districts spent the lowest amount per pupil were Utah ($5,437), Idaho ($6,440) and Arizona ($6,472). (See Tables 8 and 11.)

Of the total expenditures for elementary and secondary education, current spending made up $451 billion (85.7 percent) and capital outlay $59 billion (11.2 percent). (See Table 1.)

From current spending, school districts allotted $271.8 billion to elementary and secondary instruction. Of that amount, $184.4 billion (68 percent) went to salaries and $58.5 billion went to employee benefits (22 percent). Another $156 billion went to support services. (See Table 6.)

Of the $156 billion spent on support services, 28 percent went to operations and maintenance, and 5 percent went to general administration. Of the states that used 10 percent or more of their support services on general administration expenditures, North Dakota topped the list at 14 percent. General administration includes the activities of the boards of education and the offices of the superintendent. (See Table 7.)

Of the $59 billion in capital outlay, $45 billion (77 percent) was spent on construction, $5 billion (8 percent) was spent on land and existing structures, and $8.7 billion (15 percent) went to equipment. (See Table 9.)

Other highlights:

• State government contributions per student averaged $5,018 nationally. Hawaii had the largest revenue from state sources per pupil ($13,301). South Dakota had the least state revenue per student ($2,922). (See Table 11.)
• The percentage of state government financing for public education was highest in Hawaii (89.9 percent) and lowest in Nebraska (31.4 percent). (See Table 5.)
• The average contribution per pupil from local sources was $4,779, with the highest amount from the District of Columbia ($16,195), which comprises a single urban district (and therefore does not receive state financing). The state with the smallest contribution from local sources was Hawaii ($265). (See Table 11).
• The percentage of local revenue for school districts was highest in Illinois (59.1 percent) and lowest in Hawaii (1.8 percent). (See Table 5.)
• On average, the federal government contributed $974 per student enrolled in public school systems. Federal contributions ranged from $2,181 per student in Alaska to $627 in Nevada (See Table 11).
• The percentage of public school system revenues from the federal government was highest in Mississippi (20.1 percent) and lowest in New Jersey (4.3 percent). (See Table 5.)
• Spending on transportation represented 12.4 percent of support services. New York and West Virginia spent the largest percent from support services on transportation (21 percent). Hawaii (5.4 percent) and California (7.2 percent) spent the least. (See Table 7.)
• Total school district debt increased by 8.5 percent from the prior year to $322.7 billion in fiscal year 2006. (See Table 10.)

The data used in the tabulations came from a census of all public school districts. As such, they are not subject to sampling error. Although quality assurance methods were applied to all phases of data collection and processing, the data are subject to nonsampling error, including errors of response and miscoding. For more information, visit the Census Bureau’s Web site at: http://www.census.gov/govs/www/school.html.

Chinese Geopolitics and the Significance of Tibet

By George Friedman, Stratfor.com

China is an island. We do not mean it is surrounded by water; we mean China is surrounded by territory that is difficult to traverse. Therefore, China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others; not utterly impossible, but quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry in the 19th century and under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has to behave very differently than other great powers.

Analyzing Chinese Geography

Let’s begin simply by analyzing Chinese geography, looking at two maps. The first represents the physical geography of China.

The second shows the population density not only of China, but also of the surrounding countries.

China’s geography is roughly divided into two parts: a mountainous, arid western part and a coastal plain that becomes hilly at its westward end. The overwhelming majority of China’s population is concentrated in that coastal plain. The majority of China’s territory — the area west of this coastal plain — is lightly inhabited, however. This eastern region is the Chinese heartland that must be defended at all cost.

China as an island is surrounded by impassable barriers — barriers that are difficult to pass or areas that essentially are wastelands with minimal population. To the east is the Pacific Ocean. To the north and northwest are the Siberian and Mongolian regions, sparsely populated and difficult to move through. To the south, there are the hills, mountains and jungles that separate China from Southeast Asia; to visualize this terrain, just remember the incredible effort that went into building the Burma Road during World War II. To the southwest lie the Himalayas. In the northwest are Kazakhstan and the vast steppes of Central Asia. Only in the far northeast, with the Russian maritime provinces and the Yalu River separating China from Korea, are there traversable points of contacts. But the balance of military power is heavily in China’s favor at these points.

Strategically, China has two problems, both pivoting around the question of defending the coastal region. First, China must prevent attacks from the sea. This is what the Japanese did in the 1930s, first invading Manchuria in the northeast and then moving south into the heart of China. It is also what the British and other European powers did on a lesser scale in the 19th century. China’s defense against such attacks is size and population. It draws invaders in and then wears them out, with China suffering massive casualties and economic losses in the process.

The second threat to China comes from powers moving in through the underpopulated portion of the west, establishing bases and moving east, or coming out of the underpopulated regions around China and invading. This is what happened during the Mongol invasion from the northwest. But that invasion was aided by tremendous Chinese disunity, as were the European and Japanese incursions.

Beijing’s Three Imperatives

Beijing therefore has three geopolitical imperatives:

• Maintain internal unity so that far powers can’t weaken the ability of the central government to defend China.
• Maintain a strong coastal defense to prevent an incursion from the Pacific.
• Secure China’s periphery by anchoring the country’s frontiers on impassable geographical features; in other words, hold its current borders.

In short, China’s strategy is to establish an island, defend its frontiers efficiently using its geographical isolation as a force multiplier, and, above all, maintain the power of the central government over the country, preventing regionalism and factionalism.

We see Beijing struggling to maintain control over China. Its vast security apparatus and interlocking economic system are intended to achieve that. We see Beijing building coastal defenses in the Pacific, including missiles that can reach deep into the Pacific, in the long run trying to force the U.S. Navy on the defensive. And we see Beijing working to retain control over two key regions: Xinjiang and Tibet.

Xinjiang is Muslim. This means at one point it was invaded by Islamic forces. It also means that it can be invaded and become a highway into the Chinese heartland. Defense of the Chinese heartland therefore begins in Xinjiang. So long as Xinjiang is Chinese, Beijing will enjoy a 1,500-mile, inhospitable buffer between Lanzhou — the westernmost major Chinese city and its oil center — and the border of Kazakhstan. The Chinese thus will hold Xinjiang regardless of Muslim secessionists.

Yamdrok Tso is one of the three largest sacred lakes in Tibet. It is over 72 km (45 miles) long at an altitude of 4488 meters.

The Importance of Tibet to China

Now look at Tibet on the population density and terrain maps. On the terrain map one sees the high mountain passes of the Himalayas. Running from the Hindu Kush on the border with Pakistan to the Myanmar border, small groups can traverse this terrain, but no major army is going to thrust across this border in either direction. Supplying a major force through these mountains is impossible. From a military point of view, it is a solid wall.

Note that running along the frontier directly south of this border is one of the largest population concentrations in the world. If China were to withdraw from Tibet, and there were no military hindrance to population movement, Beijing fears this population could migrate into Tibet. If there were such a migration, Tibet could turn into an extension of India and, over time, become a potential beachhead for Indian power. If that were to happen, India’s strategic frontier would directly abut Sichuan and Yunnan — the Chinese heartland.

The Chinese have a fundamental national interest in retaining Tibet, because Tibet is the Chinese anchor in the Himalayas. If that were open, or if Xinjiang became independent, the vast buffers between China and the rest of Eurasia would break down. The Chinese can’t predict the evolution of Indian, Islamic or Russian power in such a circumstance, and they certainly don’t intend to find out. They will hold both of these provinces, particularly Tibet.

Gyantse Old Town. Gyantse is the fourth largest city in Tibet.

The Chinese note that the Dalai Lama has been in India ever since China invaded Tibet. The Chinese regard him as an Indian puppet. They see the latest unrest in Tibet as instigated by the Indian government, which uses the Dalai Lama to try to destabilize the Chinese hold on Tibet and open the door to Indian expansion. To put it differently, their view is that the Indians could shut the Dalai Lama down if they wanted to, and that they don’t signals Indian complicity.

It should be added that the Chinese see the American hand behind this as well. Apart from public statements of support, the Americans and Indians have formed a strategic partnership since 2001. The Chinese view the United States — which is primarily focused on the Islamic world — as encouraging India and the Dalai Lama to probe the Chinese, partly to embarrass them over the Olympics and partly to increase the stress on the central government. The central government is stretched in maintaining Chinese security as the Olympics approach. The Chinese are distracted. Beijing also notes the similarities between what is happening in Tibet and the “color” revolutions the United States supported and helped stimulate in the former Soviet Union.

It is critical to understand that whatever the issues might be to the West, the Chinese see Tibet as a matter of fundamental national security, and they view pro-Tibetan agitation in the West as an attempt to strike at the heart of Chinese national security. The Chinese are therefore trapped. They are staging the Olympics in order to demonstrate Chinese cohesion and progress. But they must hold on to Tibet for national security reasons, and therefore their public relations strategy is collapsing. Neither India nor the United States is particularly upset that the Europeans are thinking about canceling attendance at various ceremonies.

Village life in Tibet, just outside Samye.

A Lack of Countermoves

China has few countermoves to this pressure over Tibet. There is always talk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That is not going to happen — not because China doesn’t want to, but because it does not have the naval capability of seizing control of the Taiwan Straits or seizing air superiority, certainly not if the United States doesn’t want it (and we note that the United States has two carrier battle groups in the Taiwan region at the moment). Beijing thus could bombard Taiwan, but not without enormous cost to itself and its own defensive capabilities. It does not have the capability to surge forces across the strait, much less to sustain operations there in anything short of a completely permissive threat environment. The Chinese could fire missiles at Taiwan, but that risks counterstrikes from American missiles. And, of course, Beijing could go nuclear, but that is not likely given the stakes. The most likely Chinese counter here would be trying to isolate Taiwan from shipping by firing missiles. But that again assumes the United States would not respond — something Beijing can’t count on.

While China thus lacks politico-military options to counter the Tibet pressure, it also lacks economic options. It is highly dependent for its economic well-being on exports to the United States and other countries; drawing money out of U.S. financial markets would require Beijing to put it somewhere else. If the Chinese invested in Europe, European interest rates would go down and U.S. rates would go up, and European money would pour into the United States. The long-held fear of the Chinese withdrawing their money from U.S. markets is therefore illusory: The Chinese are trapped economically. Far more than the United States, they can’t afford a confrontation.

That leaves the pressure on Tibet, and China struggling to contain it. Note that Beijing’s first imperative is to maintain China’s internal coherence. China’s great danger is always a weakening of the central government and the development of regionalism. Beijing is far from losing control, but recently we have observed a set of interesting breakdowns. The inability to control events in Tibet is one. Significant shortages of diesel fuel is a second. Shortages of rice and other grains is a third. These are small things, but they are things that should not be happening in a country as well-heeled in terms of cash as China is, and as accustomed as it is to managing security threats.

An elderly Tibetan woman holding a prayer wheel on the Lhasa's pilgrimage circuit of Barkhor. The Barkhor, a quadrangle of streets that surrounds the Jokhang Temple, is both the spiritual heart of the holy city and the main commercial district for Tibetans.

China must hold Tibet, and it will. The really interesting question is whether the stresses building up on China’s central administration are beginning to degrade its ability to control and manage events. It is easy to understand China’s obsession with Tibet. The next step is to watch China trying to pick up the pieces on a series of administrative miscues. That will give us a sense of the state of Chinese affairs.

Wanted: Armed Bank Robber

FBI and Police Seek Information on Take-Over Bank Robberies

In just over a one month period the same bank in Woodland, California, has been the victim of two take-over style bank robberies. The offender, a lone male, robbed the Washington Mutual Bank, 1224 E. Gibson Road, Woodland, California, on March 13, 2008, and April 9, 2008.

Both robberies occurred minutes after the bank opened at 9:00 a.m. and in each case the robber brandished a handgun and ordered everyone in the bank to get on the floor. After making his demands to the teller the robber continually panned the bank with his handgun and ordered employees and customers not to depress any alarm buttons. During the robbery on March 13th the robber placed an undisclosed amount of money in a shoe-box and ran out of the bank. During the second robbery on April 9, 2008, the robber used a black duffle bag to remove an undisclosed amount of money from the bank.

Witness information suggests the robber used two different get-a-way vehicles: a black, mid 1990's, two-door sedan type Honda Civic and a silver/gray, late 1990's two door sporty Acura. Witness descriptions of the robber vary slightly for each robbery but investigators believe this is the work of one individual. Following are the descriptions of the robber for each of the robberies:

• March 13, 2008 - the robber is described as a white or Hispanic male, 25 - 30 years of age, 6'0" to 6'2", 185 - 230 lbs., medium build and olive skin. The robber was wearing a black ski mask, blank long sleeve sweatshirt, white undershirt, black gloves, black pants and black shoes with brown trim around the sole of the shoe.

• April 9, 2008 - the robber is described as a white or Hispanic male, 6'0" to 6'4", 200 - 280 lbs., stocky build and light skin. The robber was wearing a black ski mask, black long sleeve sweatshirt, white undershirt, black gloves, black pants and black shoes.

A reward of $5,000 has been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual responsible for these robberies. Anyone with information is urged to call the FBI in Sacramento at (916) 481-9110 or the Woodland Police Department at 530-661-7800.

Tip the FBI Online - FBI Tips and Public Leads

How Do You Rate the U.S. Economy?

Fractal Art

Bouquet

Positive+Negative

Dragon Egg

Lizard Skin

Universes

Orchid

Heaven 05

Kappa Space

Splat

Rope

Chainlink

And This is Your Brain on Drugs

It doesn't take rocket science to create fractal images, but sometimes it takes a rocket scientist to create fractal art.

The fractals here were created by Sven Geier, who is currently employed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); a division of the California Institute of Technology and a center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

水に煙 (Smoke on the Water)

"Smoke on the Water"

Underwater Nuclear Sub Repair Training

Sunrise at the Navy Seals training facility, Key West, Florida. (my photo) Underwater photos by Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Andrew McKaskle. (released) All photos, click to enlarge.

A Navy diver stands by to assist a special operator, both from SEAL Delivery Team (SDV) 2, with SDV operations with the nuclear-powered submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) for material certification. Material certification allows operators to perform real-world operations anytime, anywhere.

A Navy diver and special operator from SEAL Delivery Team (SDV) 2 perform SDV operations with the nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) for material certification.

Navy divers and special operators from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team (SDV) 2 and Naval Special Warfare Logistics Support conduct Lock Out Training with the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine USS Hawaii (SSN 776) for material certification.

Navy divers and special operators attached to SEAL Delivery Team (SDV) 2, perform SDV operations with the Ohio-Class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) for material certification.

Navy divers and special operators from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team (SDV) 2 and Naval Special Warfare Logistics Support conduct Lock Out Training with the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine USS Hawaii (SSN 776) for material certification.

To learn more about Navy Seals training, visit How the Navy Seals Work or the Official U.S. Navy Seal Information Website.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to World Peace

Each year the U.S. Department of State issues a "Worldwide Caution" for Americans traveling abroad. More than ever, this caution should be distributed worldwide.

I like to think of it as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to World Peace" in memory of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, an Italian woman artist who was murdered while hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace.

~ ~ ~

Worldwide Caution - Updated January 17, 2008

This Worldwide Caution updates information on the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against Americans and interests throughout the world. American citizens are reminded to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness.

The Department of State remains concerned about the continued threat of terrorist attacks, demonstrations and other violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests overseas. Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. interests in multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics including suicide operations, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bombings.

Extremists may elect to use conventional or non-conventional weapons, and target both official and private interests. Examples of such targets include high-profile sporting events, residential areas, business offices, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, public areas and locales where Americans gather in large numbers, including during holidays. In August 2007, two bombs exploded almost simultaneously at an amusement park and a restaurant in India, killing at least 42 people. In June 2007, two unexploded car bombs were discovered in London.

Americans are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems. Recent examples include multiple terrorist attacks on trains in India in 2006, the July 2005 London Underground bombings, and the March 2004 train attacks in Madrid. In addition, extremists may also select aviation and maritime services as possible targets, such as the August 2006 plot against aircraft in London, or the December 2006 bomb at Madrid's Barajas International Airport. In June 2007, a vehicle was driven into the main terminal at Glasgow International Airport and burst into flames, but the bomb failed to detonate.

The Middle East and North Africa

Credible information indicates terrorist groups seek to continue attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East and North Africa. Terrorist actions may include bombings, hijackings, hostage taking, kidnappings, and assassinations. While conventional weapons such as explosive devices are a more immediate threat in many areas, use of non-conventional weapons, including chemical or biological agents, must be considered a possible threat. Terrorists do not distinguish between official and civilian targets. Increased security at official U.S. facilities has led terrorists and their sympathizers to seek softer targets such as public transportation, residential areas, and public areas where people congregate, including restaurants, hotels, clubs, and shopping areas.

On December 11, 2007, two vehicle-borne explosive devices were detonated at the UN headquarters in Algiers and the Algerian Constitutional Council. Three other suicide bomb attacks in July and September of 2007 in Algeria killed more than 80 people. In July 2007, suspected al-Qaida operatives carried out a vehicle-borne explosive device attack on tourists at the Bilquis Temple in Yemen, which resulted in the deaths of eight Spanish tourists and their two Yemeni drivers. There was a series of bombings in Morocco in March and April 2007, two of which occurred simultaneously outside the U.S. Consulate General and the private American Language Center in Casablanca. Additionally, an attack took place on the American International School in Gaza in April 2007. These events underscore the intent of terrorist entities to target facilities perceived to cater to Westerners. The September 2006 attack on the U.S. embassy in Syria and the March 2006 bombing near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan illustrate the continuing desire of extremists to strike American targets.

Potential targets are not limited to those companies or establishments with overt U.S. ties. For instance, terrorists may target movie theaters, liquor stores, bars, casinos, or any similar type of establishment, regardless of whether they are owned and operated by host country nationals. Due to varying degrees of security at all such locations, Americans should be particularly vigilant when visiting these establishments.

The violence in Iraq, clashes between Palestinians and Israelis, clashes between terrorist extremists and the Lebanese Armed Forces, and the violence in Pakistan following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007 have the potential to produce demonstrations and unrest throughout the region. Americans are reminded that demonstrations and rioting can occur with little or no warning. In addition, the Department of State continues to warn of the possibility for violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests in the region. Anti-American violence could include possible terrorist actions against aviation, ground transportation, and maritime interests, specifically in the Middle East, including the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa.

The Department is concerned that extremists may be planning to carry out attacks against Westerners and oil workers on the Arabian Peninsula. Armed attacks targeting foreign nationals in Saudi Arabia that resulted in many deaths and injuries, including U.S. citizens, appear to have been preceded by extensive surveillance. Tourist destinations in Egypt that are frequented by Westerners were attacked in April 2006 resulting in many deaths and injuries, including Americans. Extremists may be surveilling Westerners, particularly at hotels, housing areas, and rental car facilities. Potential targets may include U.S. contractors, particularly those related to military interests. Financial or economic venues of value also could be considered as possible targets; the failed attack on the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia in late February 2006 and the September 2006 attack on oil facilities in Yemen are examples.

East Africa

A number of al-Qaida operatives and other extremists are believed to be operating in and around East Africa. As a result of the conflict in Somalia, some of these individuals may seek to relocate elsewhere in the region. Americans considering travel to the region and those already there should review their plans carefully, remain vigilant with regard to their personal security, and exercise caution. Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, bombings, kidnappings or targeting maritime vessels. Terrorists do not distinguish between official and civilian targets. Increased security at official U.S. facilities has led terrorists to seek softer targets such as hotels, beach resorts, prominent public places, and landmarks. In particular, terrorists may target civil aviation and seaports. Americans in remote areas or border regions where military or police authority is limited or non-existent could also become targets.

Americans considering seaborne travel near the Horn of Africa or in the southern Red Sea should exercise extreme caution, as there have been several incidents of armed attacks, robberies, and kidnappings for ransom at sea by pirates during the past several years. Merchant vessels continue to be hijacked in Somali territorial waters, while others have been hijacked as far as 200 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia in international waters.

The U.S. Government maritime authorities advise mariners to avoid the port of Mogadishu, and to remain at least 200 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia. In addition, when transiting around the Horn of Africa or in the Red Sea, it is strongly recommended that vessels travel in convoys, and maintain good communications contact at all times.

Central Asia

The U.S. Government continues to receive information that terrorist groups in Central Asia may be planning attacks in the region, possibly against U.S. Government facilities, American citizens, or American interests. Elements and supporters of extremist groups present in Central Asia, including the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), al-Qaida, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, have expressed anti-U.S. sentiments in the past and have demonstrated the capability to conduct terrorist operations in the region. Previous terrorist attacks conducted in Central Asia have involved improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers and have targeted public areas, such as markets, local government facilities, and, in 2004, the U.S. and Israeli Embassies in Uzbekistan. In addition, hostage-takings and skirmishes have occurred near the Uzbek-Tajik-Kyrgyz border areas.

Before You Go

U.S. citizens living or traveling abroad are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department's travel registration web site at https://travelregistration.state.gov/ibrs/ui/ so that they can obtain updated information on travel and security. Americans without Internet access may register directly with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. By registering, American citizens make it easier for the Embassy or Consulate to contact them in case of emergency.

U.S. citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance, be aware of local events, and take the appropriate steps to bolster their personal security. For additional information, please refer to "A Safe Trip Abroad" found at http://travel.state.gov/.

U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened state of alert. These facilities may temporarily close or periodically suspend public services to assess their security posture. In those instances, U.S. embassies and consulates will make every effort to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens. Americans abroad are urged to monitor the local news and maintain contact with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.

As the Department continues to develop information on any potential security threats to U.S. citizens overseas, it shares credible threat information through its Consular Information Program documents, available on the Internet at http://travel.state.gov/. In addition to information on the Internet, travelers may obtain up-to-date information on security conditions by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the U.S. and Canada or, outside the U.S. and Canada on a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.

Social Networking Can Be a Drag

Girl, You've Been 'Rolled!

~ ~ ~

Rickrolling is a prank involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up. In a Rick Roll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). A person who falls for the prank is said to be "rickrolled".

Guerilla Parenting

Do your children respect the hours of hard work that you invest in them? No! Children exploit their parents in much the same way that McDonalds corporation exploits the poor and weak people of Canada's rainforests. [Huh? Just checking if you've had your coffee.]

It's time to take matters into your own hands and force the little bastards to behave properly. The time for calm exhortations and promises of extra cartoon time is over.

Use these stencils to decorate your neighborhood with messages that will make your kids behave and stop treating the place like a goddamned amusement park.

It's for their own good.

Warning: Police may confuse your activities with illegal grafitti and vandalism.

download vegetables stencil

download underwear stencil

download play nice stencil

download others stencil

download I said so stencil

download yourself stencil

Toilet Cleaning Instructions

Toilet Cleaning Instructions:

1. Put both lids of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the water in the bowl.

2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom.

3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids. You may need to stand on the lid.

4. The cat will self agitate and make ample suds. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.

5. Flush the toilet three or four times. This provides a 'power-wash' and 'rinse'.

6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door.

7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift both lids.

8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where it will dry itself off.

9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean.

Sincerely, The Dog

Jihad

By GlobalSecurity.org

The usual translation of jihad as ‘holy war’ is misleading; ‘exertion’ or ‘struggle’ is more accurate: “A general injunction to strive in the way of God” (Albert Hourani: A History of the Arab Peoples, Faber and Faber, 1992)

The most radical Islamic activists, in order to wage holy war against the infidel, have given birth to an internation-al network, not to be confused with the mild concept of ummah that unites the Muslim faithful in the conviction of belonging all to one nation, that is, the nation of Islam. The internationalization of Islamic radicalism draws its origins from the Afghani resistance against the Soviet Union, followed by a further resistance conceived as a struggle against the American and Western occupation of the holiest places of Islam and against West-ern polluting of the Islamic world, nefariously allowed by local regimes viewed as corrupt.

As a movement for the establishment of Muslim governance, Islamic radicalism was born in the 1920s with the creation of an organization of Egyptian origin known as the Muslim Brotherhood. From the outset, Islamic radicalism opposed not only colonialism, but also Western modernism and non-Islamic Arab governments. The radicalization process intensified with the formation of the State of Israel and the movement itself gradually internationalized, facilitated by the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Gulf War, to the point of reaching its current dynamism.

Individually considered, the aggregations of greater relevance today are Hizballah or Party of God, Shia, Egyptian, and pro-Iranian, operational since the 1980s; Hamas or Islamic Resistance Movement and Palestine Islamic Jihad, both Sunni, operating in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank since the late 1980s the former and since the late 1970s the latter; the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Sunni and Algerian, in existence since the early 1990s, and it spin-off, Salafi Group for Call and Combat; al-Jihad or Holy War and al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or Islamic Group, both Sunni and Egyptian, formed in the late 1970s; the Abu Sayyaf Group, Sunni and southern Filipino, a spin-off of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front since 1991; Harakat ul-Mujahidin or Movement of Islamic Fighters, Jaish-e-Mohammed or Army of Mohamed, and Lashkar-e-Tayyba or Army of the Righteous, all three Sunni, Pakistani and active primarily in the Kashmir area claimed by both Pakistan and India; and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a coalition of Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states.

Besides aiming at the creation of an Islamic theocratic government in their own country or even in their geopolitical area, all of the above-listed aggregations share one or more of the following char-acteristics: a dual structure, overt, on the one hand, for political action, religious ministry, proselytizing, fundraising, and social assistance, and covert, on the other hand, for terrorist initiatives; hatred for Israel; the presence of representative organs abroad; terrorist action beyond their own national boundaries; and holy war without quarter against the infidel at the universal level. Some of these groups have enjoyed or still enjoy to this day forms of support from sponsor states governed by either theocratic or secular regimes. Iran has been supporting Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad and is accused by Egypt of supporting also Holy War and the Islamic Group.

According to press sources, Libya has paid ransom to the Abu Sayyaf Group, thus encouraging it to commit further abductions of West-ern citizens. Sudan has granted asylum to Holy War, the Islamic Group, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad, which exploit-ed it as an operational base. Moreover, Algeria has charged Sudan with support-ing the GIA. Syria has been assisting on its own territory Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad and allows them, as well as Hizballah, to use the Bekaa Valley in Lebanese territory. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan avails itself of the Iranian radio system to broadcast propaganda. India accuses Pakistan of assisting Islamic terrorist organizations that operate in Kashmir.

Other forms of assistance, primarily financial, issue from private benefactors aware or unaware of supporting domestic and international terrorism, given the dual structure utilized by several of these groups, which, thanks precisely to their dual structure, respond to a socio-economic void unfilled by government or society in many Third World countries. This aspect increases popular following and the relative danger posed by Islamic radicalism.

In this context, a series of well known events has taken place: the constitution in the late 1980s of al-Qaida, or The Base, as an umbrella for coordinating, training and supporting various subordinate, semi-autonomous, and autonomous organizations dedicated to holy war at the global level; the training in Afghanistan of approximately 11,000 militants, who subsequently either fought in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Dagestan or returned to their respective countries to conduct an internal struggle or took up residence in the West to set up operational and logistical cells; the issuance of numerous anti-Western fat-was or religious decrees, among which stands out the one of February 1998 undersigned by representatives of al-Qaida, Holy War (Egypt), Islamic Group (Egypt), Jamat-ul-Ulema (Pakistan), and Jihad Movement (Bangladesh), in which all Muslims are called upon to kill Americans and their allies, civilians as well as military, wherever possible; the creation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders; the fine tuning, until the recent Western military intervention in Afghanistan, of a triad consisting of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; and about twenty anti-Western terrorist attacks that culminated in the destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon.

The purposes and the objectives of Islamic radicalism are clearly defined in a document found in England in May 2000 and titled Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants, which states in part: The main mission … is the overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.

HellHoles

HellHoles, the best horror/sci-fi/comedy internet series of all time.

[After viewing an episode at the AtomFilms Studio site, their site becomes a little difficult to navigate. I've created this page to aid your viewing enjoyment of HellHoles. Just click a chapter photo to play. Enjoy! - c ]

This is the pilot episode of HellHoles, an original Web series from the AtomFilms Studio about a dude who discovers his trailer home is a portal into another dimension. Oh — and it's freakin' hilarious.

Guy goes into denial about his hellish living conditions in episode two where the spookiness starts to get hot.

Guy teams up with demon expert Professor Klum. Together, can they find a way out of hell?

The hilariously hellish saga concludes when Guy, the Professor and that really cute chick who works at the deli take on that freaky devil girl... IN HELL!

See HellHoles commentary and bloopers at AtomFilms Studio.

All the Water and Air in the World

All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. and all the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density.

Pat Stanton writes:

My son sent me a link to the image of spheres representing all the water and air on Earth. He was skeptical and suspected it was an example of “tree-hugger shock media.”

I decided to do the math, starting with the data provided by Andrew Nowicki. The math appears to verify the posted image. Although I applaud my son’s skepticism, tree-hugger shock media sometimes brings us an important and informative message.

General approach:

Measure the spheres representing Earth, water and air in the image. Obtain the diameter in pixels of each sphere. Also, identify relevant physical constants.

Starting with data independently provided by Andrew Nowicki, calculate the diameters of spheres that would contain Earth’s water and air.

Normalize the results from Step 2 into pixels and compare with measurements from Step 1.

Detailed results:

1. Image Measurements

The image was imported into Adobe Photoshop Elements, enhanced to better reveal spherical outlines, and measured using the Info tool. Measurements from several trials were averaged.

Earth diameter = 185 pixels Water diameter = 22 pixels Air diameter = 30 pixels

Relevant physical constants and relationships:

Spherical volume = (1/6) x Pi x diameter^3 Earth diameter = 12,732 km Mean molar mass of air = 28.94 g / mol Atmospheric pressure (sea level) = 101,325 Pa Temperature (sea level) = 20 C = 293 K Universal gas law constant = R = 8.3145 m^3 Pa / (mol K)

2. Water Calculations

Ocean mass = 1.35 x 10^18 tonnes (Andrew Nowicki) = 1.35 x 10^21 kg

Ocean volume = 1.35 x 10^21 L = 1.35 x 10^24 cm^3 = 1.35 x 10^9 km^3

Solving for diameter, Sphere diameter = 1.371 x 10^3 km

Normalizing to pixels, Sphere diameter = 1.371 x 10^3 km x (185 pixels / 12,732 km) = 20 pixels

This value compare favorably with the measured diameter of 22 pixels. Note that the preceding calculations are based on ocean mass, while the image also included ice, water vapor, fresh water, etc.

3. Air Calculations

Air mass = 5.1480 x 10^18 kg (Andrew Nowicki) = 5.1480 x 10^21 g

Air molecules = 5.1480 x 10^21 g / (28.94 g / mol) = 1.777 x 10^20 mol

Using the Ideal Gas Law, PV = nRT (101,325 Pa) x (Air volume) = (1.777 x 10^20 mol) x (8.3145 m^3 Pa / (mol K)) x 293 K

Air volume = 4.273 x 10^18 m^3 = 4.273 x 10^9 km^3

Solving for diameter, Sphere diameter = 2.013 x 10^3 km

Normalizing to pixels, Sphere diameter = 2.013 x 10^3 km x (185 pixels / 12,732 km) = 29 pixels

This value compare very favorably with the measured diameter of 30 pixels.

Conclusion: The posted image is correct.

Well done, thanks Pat!

Atheism for Dummies

545 People

545 People - by Charlie Reese, a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.

No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.

Who is the speaker of the House? She/He is the leader of the majority party. She/He and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted - by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Japanese Cars: Serve Chilled

The Sea of Japan side of Hokkaido has an average January high temperature of -4.9°C (23°F).

Together with wind and plenty of waves, exposed ship decks are no place for your new Japanese import. Here cars stand a good chance of becoming popscicles.

If the customers only knew...

Russian Contract Kills

Russia and the Return of the FSB

Since the start of the year, two high-profile Russians have apparently fallen victim to targeted killings. Georgian-Russian businessman Arkady Patarkatsishvili reportedly was killed in February, while international financier Leonid Rozhetskin was reported missing by his family in March and is presumed to be dead. Russia has been known as a dangerous place for politicians, businessmen and criminals alike ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. Organized criminal groups especially have used targeted killings or hits as a means of business, intimidation and control.

But even as the Russian government begins to rein in organized crime, the number of homicides has not begun to decline, and the number of high-profile targeted killings even seems to be rising. This could be a signal that another group relying on violence and assassinations as a tool is on the rise, though with very different motives than those of the criminal groups. This other group is most likely the Federal Security Service (FSB), which is on the rise again.

THE NEW RUSSIANS: Russians pay their respects to a fallen gang member Mikhail Kuchin, portrayed on his tombstone holding keys to his Mercedes Benz, a symbol of new Russian power. In the absence of market reforms in Russia, organized crime replaced the state as property distributor and dispute arbiter, while it stifled legitimate entrepreneurs. Yevgeny Kondakov.

Crime in Post-Soviet Russia

Corruption in the Soviet Union was bred largely by the state-run economy, which left citizens lacking basic goods. Small groups of entrepreneurs emerged to provide items otherwise not available, and so the black market came into its own with the 1917 Revolution. The stability of both the Soviet state and organized crime allowed for a balance that kept crime and violence at a fairly minimal level.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster for Russians. But the situation in the Russia of the 1990s was even worse. Workers went unpaid, social services collapsed and poverty was epidemic. Uncertainty, fear and desperation are major motivators for crime in Russia, as they would be anywhere. This alone was enough to trigger high crime rates. There was in fact an explosion in homicides after the fall of the Soviet Union. In Russia, homicides alone jumped from just over 10,000 in 1988 to 20,000 in 1992 and to 30,000 in 1995. The rate has continued to stay around the last figure for the past decade, with only a miniscule decrease in the past two years.

All of this was compounded by the reality that the only stable entities in Russia of the 1990s were organized criminal groups. As the Soviet Union became the Russian Federation, elements within the government called on organized crime to facilitate reform. In the process, the line between business and the underworld became significantly more blurred, perhaps even nonexistent. The new government of Russia felt that combating such corruption would hinder the shift to capitalism, at least in the initial stages of the tranisition from a state-planned economy.

When Russia began to privatize state property in 1992, Russian organized crime groups snapped up the assets. Not only did this help expand and solidify the emerging relationship between the state and organized crime, it also gave criminal groups tremendous economic and political power since the property gave the criminal organizations direct access to the Russian government. In 1994, then-President Boris Yeltsin called Russia the “biggest mafia state in the world.” This reality would only worsen as the 1990s dragged on.

Making matters worse, Russian organized crime groups were transformed from basic groups with simple tactics of intimidation to highly trained and knowledgeable groups with more precise targeting and a better arsenal of hardware and connections. This transformation occurred as approximately 40 percent of workers from the KGB left government employment. The majority of these former KGB employees either entered the personal protection business — most of whom found work for criminals and the new class of oligarchs — or simply joined criminal groups.

The Return of State Control

But Russia as a country changed once Vladimir Putin became president of the country in 1999. Putin’s main objectives after taking the top office were first, to get Russia back under government control, and second, to let the world know Russia was back under control and thus able to act effectively again. Most Russians feel Putin saved Russia from break-up, political chaos, an economic black hole and degeneration into a criminal state. To accomplish this, Putin first had to gain control over the government while reorganizing those structures used to keep all Russian groups in line, such as the FSB. He then had to take back the state’s assets from the oligarchs and the organized criminal groups.

The exorbitant amount of revenue Russia has earned from petroleum has fueled Putin’s bold moves. Putin tucked away some of this money as a safety net; the rest flooded into the Russian economy. Now, as Putin is set to leave office, the country is nearly consolidated. The state owns the most important assets in the country and controls most facets of life, the economy is growing substantially and most Russians have confidence in their government.

Expanded government control over most apsects of Russia has not translated into wiping organized crime out, for the criminal sector is such a large facet of Russian society that any attempt to purge organized crime altogether could destabilize the country. It has meant, however, restricting its activities mainly to business and nonstrategic economic matters while maintaining firm state oversight over organized crime’s activities.

The Homicide Paradox and the FSB Reborn

But as mentioned, increased state control has not caused the homicide rate to decline and Russia has seen an increase in high-profile targeted killings over the past two years. And also as metnioned, the explanation for this seeming paradox could be a shift in who is carrying out these killings — especially the high-profile killings — and why.

The FSB, the KGB’s successor, has undergone a massive makeover under Putin, mainly because he is a former KGB and FSB man himself. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, all internal legal issues, domestic espionage and foreign espionage were handled by the KGB. After the intelligence community mounted a slew of coup attempts following the Soviet collapse, Yeltsin broke up what was left of the powerful KGB, by then called the FSB, into a series of intelligence agencies without an overarching entity. This was meant to create competition among the smaller intelligence services and to prevent more coup attempts.

But splintering the intelligence body created massive inefficiencies and information gaps, leaving the former Soviet intelligence and security community — once one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world — a mere shadow of its former menacing self. Putin, however, knew that one of the best ways to rein in Russia’s chaotic businesses, organized crime and politicians was through strong-arm security tactics. And that meant consolidating and re-empowering the FSB.

The FSB’s reconstitution has taken two forms over the past decade. First, Putin has consolidated most of the splinter intelligence agencies back under the FSB, correcting many of the inefficiencies, and has flooded the FSB with funding for training, recruiting and modernizing after years of disregard. Second, Putin has used former KGB and current FSB members to fill many positions within Russian big business, the Duma and other political posts. Putin initially reasoned that the intelligence community thought of Russia the same way he did — namely, as a great state, domestically and internationally. Putin also knew that those within the intelligence community would not flinch at his less than democratic (to put it mildly) means of consolidating Russia politically, economically, socially, etc. And this reorganization has seen the FSB engage in extralegal killings formerly monopolized by organized crime.

Former Russian mafia boss Yury holds a photo album charting his time at a drug rehab centre, and the way God has transformed his life.

Organized Crime vs. FSB Hits

What differentiates organized criminal hits from FSB hits is that the criminal groups kill to stake their turf, to protect or advance their business interests or if a deal has gone bad. By contrast, the FSB is ideologically motivated, and will strike in the interests of the Russian state or of the politicians it serves. This explains the shift toward high-profile murders in the past few years, with victims expanding from common businesspeople to include journalists, politicians, bankers and people involved with strategic sectors.

High-profile murders are defined by the status of the victim within his or her cause, position or business; for example, the killing of a mid-level manager at a steel company would not represent a high-profile murder. These hits take on national interest, and sometimes even garner international attention. The 1990s saw approximately two to four high-profile murders a year. Nearly all of them were motivated by business or criminal reasons, and did not have a political purpose. The past three years, however, saw approximately four high-profile murders per year. Half of these killings were carried out for deeper, more political reasons. This has sparked the assumption that the more recent killings were political hits by the government’s tool for such purposes, namely, the FSB.

Some of the high-profile victims suspected of being slain for political reasons have included:

• Anna Politkovskaya, October 2006. A prominent journalist and critic of the Kremlin, Politkovskaya was in the process of publishing a series condemning the government’s policy in Chechnya. She was shot in the head in her apartment building. [article's first picture]
  

• Alexander Litvinenko, November 2006. Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who had defected to the United Kingdom and published books on the internal workings of Putin’s FSB networks and critical of the new Russian state. He was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. BREAKING! New Details

• Ivan Safronov, March 2007. Safronov was a journalist who criticized the state of the Russian military and was accused of leaking military affairs to foreign parties. He allegedly committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of his apartment building, though some reports say a person behind him forced him out of the buidling.

• Oleg Zhukovsky, December 2007. Zhukovsky was an executive of the VTB bank, which at the time of his death was being taken over by the state so the Kremlin could hand-pick its senior officers to oversee many strategic state accounts. Zhukovsky allegedly performed the feat of commiting suicide by being tied to a chair and thrown into his swimming pool, where he drowned.

• Arkady Patarkatsishvili, February 2008. A wealthy Georgian-Russian businessman, Patarkatsishvili was extensively involved in Georgian politics. Patarkatsishvili died in the United Kingdom of coronary complications that resembled a heart attack. His family and many in Georgia have accused the FSB of involvement, however, saying the FSB has many untraceable poisons at its disposal.

[notice the wine glass partially edited out of the photo]

• Leonid Rozhetskin, March 2008. Rozhetskin was an international financier and lawyer who held stakes in strategic companies, like mobile phone giant MegaFon. He disappeared while in Latvia after losing Kremlin backing by selling his assets to multiple parties, including some government ministers who are former FSB agents.

This trend of high-profile killings is still very new, and could just be a temporary spike. But Russia’s state security services are on course to have much more control over society, business and politics. Russia will therefore most likely see more targeted killings of politically and strategically important people. This does not mean Russia will forever be locked into such a trend, however. As Russia finalizes its control internally and “rids the motherland of her enemies,” the Russian state will become ever further locked down — not to the extent seen under the Soviet Union, but enough that the Kremlin feels secure in its control. Until then, FSB exterminations will continue.

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart - stratfor.com

Free Energy? - or- Who's Dr. Lo?

BREAKING NEWS: Cold Fusion: China's Olympic Torch


HONG KONG, home to nuclear physicist Prof. Lisa Lo, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology and limitless energy.

As if scripted from a Hollywood movie, Dr. Lo is set to throw the switch on proof that cold fusion does exist--a room-temperature nuclear reactor capable of powering an entire city.

Dr. Lo's illuminating announcement entitled, "Free Energy," has been chosen to highlight the opening ceremony at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing on August 8.

As not to prematurely divulge the details of her discovery, Dr. Lo has offered this explanation of cold fusion:

When a plasma is used to produce fusion between two deuterons, the process is called “hot fusion”. This reaction is known to emit neutrons and produce tritium.

Previously, this reaction could not be initiated without application of significant energy because the charge barrier between nuclei, called the Coulomb barrier, could not be overcome any other way.

Proof now exists that, without energy or application of neutrons, a nuclear active environment (NAE) can be initiated by utilizing a deuterium cathode. When fusion of deuterium takes place in this environment, the main product is ordinary helium.

"Still in the dark? Don't worry. Everyone will see the light soon enough," jokes Dr. Lo.

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